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REV.   LOUIS    FITZGERALD    BENSON.  D.  D. 

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PRINCETON  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


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LECTURES,  ESSAYS,  AND 
SERMONS 


^^ 


^  Nnv  P7  1937  ^ 
SAMUEL  JOHNSON,      X^ '  ■CICAL  St<>^ 

AOTHOB  OP  "  OEIE>"rAL  EEUGIONS." 


WITH  A  MEMOIR 


SAMUEL  LONGFELLOW. 


**  Welche  Religion  ich  bekenne?    Keine  von  alien, 
Die  du  mir  nennst  —  Und  warum  keine?    Aus  Religion. 

SCHILLEE. 


BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY. 

New  York:    11    East  Seventeenth  Street. 

1883. 


Copyright,  1883, 
By  HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   &  CO. 

All  rights  reserved. 


Tfu  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge  : 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  0.  Houghton  &  Co. 


OONTEIsTTS. 


MEMOIR. 

PAGE 

I.  Boyhood 1 

11.  College  Life 3 

III.  Divinity  School 10 

IV.  Visit  to  Europe 20 

V.  Divinity  School  and  First  Preaching     .        .        .26 

VI.  Life  at  Lynn 39 

VII.  Second  Visit  to  Europe 60 

Vin,  After  his  Return  to  Lynn 19 

IX.  Life  in  North  Andover 116 

X.  Last  Days 139 

LECTURES,  ESSAYS,  AND  SERMONS. 

Florence 145 

The  Alps  of   the   Ideal  and   the   Switzerland  of  the 

Swiss 183 

Symbolism  of  the  Sea 216 

Fulfillment  of  Functions 240 

Equal  Opportunity  for  Woman 259 

Labor  Parties  and  Labor  Reform 281 

The  Law  of  the  Blessed  Life  .        .     -  .        .        .      314 

Gain  in  Loss 342 

The  Search  for  God .        .      360 

Fate 378 

Living  by  Faith 391 

"The  Duty  of  Delight" 403 

Transcendentalism 416 

Appendix 461 


MEMOIR. 


The  first  time  that  I  remember  seeing  Samuel 
Johnson  was  in  the  old  College  Chapel  at  Cam- 
bridge. It  was  the  "Class-day"  of  1842;  and  he 
was  giving  the  class  oration.  It  was  poetic  even  to 
rhapsody ;  certainly  very  unlike  ordinary  college 
orations.  I  remember  only  one  passage,  and  that 
indistinctly :  it  was  something  about  the  warrior's 
shields  sounding  upon  the  walls,  —  some  illustration, 
very  likely,  from  Ossian.  But  I  recall,  as  if  it  were 
seen  yesterday,  the  dark,  animated  countenance,  the 
flowing  hair,  the  earnest,  musical  tones,  the  light, 
quick  movement  from  one  foot  to  the  other, —  the 
whole  air  of  inspiration.  It  was  as  fascinating  as  it 
was  unlooked  for.  This  must  have  been  in  July. 
In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year,  when  I  entered  the 
Divinity  School,  I  soon  found  him  out  among  my 
classmates.  The  same  fascination  drew  me  toward 
him,  and  then  began  a  friendship  which  continued 
for  forty  years. 


Samuel  Johnson  was  born  in  Salem,  Massachu- 
setts, on  the  10th  of  October,  1822.  His  father  was 
a  much  respected  physician,  his  mother  "  of  an  old 
Salem  family."     In  that  town  far  the  larger  part  of 


5i  MEMOIR. 

Ms  life  was  passed ;  in  it  but  not  of  it.  We  can 
picture  him  in  his  boyhood,  with  his  earnest  face, 
going  to  and  from  school  through  those  elm-shaded 
streets,  looking  up  at  the  fine  old  gam br el-roofed 
houses,  or  the  statelier  mansions  of  a  later  date, 
where  dwelt  much  wealth  and  much  conservatism. 
Or  on  holiday  afternoons  rambling  over  the  neigh- 
boring fields,  searching  the  woods  for  wild  flowers, 
or  extending  his  walk  to  the  shore  of  the  harbor,  or 
to  the  sea-beaches  not  very  far  away.  A  playmate 
and  daily  companion  of  his  boyhood  describes  him 
as  "  a  healthy-natured,  active  boy,  entering  with  zest 
into  all  boyish  games  ;  with  a  quick  eye  for  any- 
thing ludicrous,  or  that  would  raise  a  shout  of  laugh- 
ter ;  indeed,  though  gentle,  affectionate,  and  utterly 
guileless,  a  leader  in  sports  even  to  the  point  of 
daring  and  sometimes  of  danger  ;  with  all  the  en- 
thusiasm in  these  things  that  marked  him  as  a  re- 
former in  later  years."  He  must  often  have  found 
his  way  to  the  old  East  Indian  Museum,  which  the 
sea-captains  had  filled  with  curiosities  from  Calcutta 
or  Bombay,  —  such  wonders  to  a  boy's  eye.  One  is 
tempted  to  ask  whether  it  is  to  that  group  of  painted 
figures,  presenting  the  various  castes  and  trades  of 
India,  that  we  owe  the  first  impulse  of  interest  whose 
outcome  was  the  "  Oriental  Religions."  More  cer- 
tainly we  might  say  that  the  collections  in  natural 
science  there  were  the  beginning  of  the  interest  in 
geology  and  mineralogy,  which  was  strong  through 
his  later  years.  I  will  not  venture  to  hint  that  his 
interest  in  science  received  any  occult  impulse  from 
his  having  been  born  in  the  very  house  where  the 
astronomer,  Nathaniel  Bowditch,  first  opened  his 
eyes  upon  the  sky. 


MEMOIR.  3 

His  best  influences  were  found  in  the  good  and 
happy  home,  in  which  not  only  his  boyhood  but  the 
greater  part  of  his  manhood  were  spent,  since  for 
more  than  one  reason  he  never  formed  a  home  for 
himself.  In  that  home  he  found  the  most  devoted 
affection,  the  love  of  books,  flowers,  music,  and  a  sim- 
ple rational  piety  of  the  Unitarian  stamp.  Of  that 
home  he  was  always  the  light  and  the  life.  Never 
was  there  a  warmer  affection,  a  truer  fidelity,  than 
he  showed  to  every  member  of  it,  through  many 
trials,  and  through  all  his  life. 

His  school-days  over,  at  the  age  of  sixteen  he  went 
up  to  Cambridge  and  entered  Harvard  College  :  a 
studious,  thoughtful,  conscientious,  affectionate,  pure- 
minded  boy ;  one  of  those  boys  who  seem  never  to 
do  anything  wrong,  not  from  lack  of  liveliness,  but 
from  purity  of  heart  and  a  quick  sense  of  right. 


n. 

Of  Johnson's  life  in  college  I  am  glad  to  have  a 
sketch  sent  me  from  his  classmate  and  intimate,  D. 
H.  Jaques.  I  will  give  it  in  his  words,  somewhat 
abridged :  — 

Johnson's  face  and  person  in  those  college  days  would 
attract  attention  anywhere.  A  dark,  but  warm  and  rich 
complexion ;  hair  black  as  ink,  and  always  worn  long ;  a 
large,  full,  dark  eye ;  a  tall  figure ;  an  eager,  headlong, 
swinging  gait  in  walking,  the  head  projected  as  if  in  quest 
of  some  object  (the  truth  ?)  before  him  in  the  distance ;  a 
full,  deep,  and  sincere  voice ;  a  bright  smile,  a  hearty  and 
musical  laugh.  These  are  the  personal  traits  which  mem- 
ory brings  back  to  me. 


4  MEMOIR. 

He  was  one  of  the  most  unaffected  men  I  ever  knew, 
with  a  perfectly  natural  ease  of  manner  in  his  intercourse 
with  others.  .  .  .  Hence  it  was  that  he  was  a  favorite,  as 
the  phrase  is,  was  "popular"  in  the  class.  Although  it 
was  well  understood  that  he  was  so  absorbed  in  his  studies 
that  he  did  not  care  to  cultivate  society,  yet  every  man  in 
the  class  had  for  him  the  kindest  feelings,  and  sought  his 
society  as  of  one  of  the  most  companionable  of  men.  This 
was  shown  by  his  election  as  orator  on  class-day,  —  an 
honor  not  often  paid  to  mere  scholarship. 

He  had  a  genuine  humor,  an  eye  quick  to  see  the  odd 
and  the  ridiculous,  a  love  for  a  joke,  a  laugh  loud,  hearty, 
and  contagious.  But  with  all  this  gayety,  this  humor  of 
the  earlier  college  days,  with  all  his  ambition  of  college 
rank,  deep  below  it  and  high  above  it  was  the  serious  pur- 
pose of  study,  the  serious  sense  of  the  duty  of  self-culture. 

He  followed  closely  the  prescribed  course  of  college 
study.  His  turn  of  mind  was  decidedly  in  the  direction 
of  the  classics,  psychology,  ethics,  and  English  literature. 
But  he  resolutely  gave  himself  to  the  vigorous  study  of  the 
pure  mathematics.  Indeed,  he  showed  a  docility  and  sub- 
missiveness  in  pursuing  the  discipline  prescribed,  which 
were  in  striking  contrast  with  the  defiance  of  mere  author- 
ity, the  genuine  spirit  of  the  Puritan  and  Independent, 
with  which  he  asserted  for  himself  in  after  life  the  right,  in 
all  matters  of  religious  belief  and  of  public  policy  and  pri- 
vate conduct,  to  think  and  act  for  himself  and  by  himself. 

With  Dr.  Walker  he  read  portions  of  Locke,  and  Cous- 
in's Lectures  on  Psychology,  translated  by  Dr.  Henry; 
Jouffroy's  Ethics,  translated  by  Mr.  Channing,  and  Say's 
Political  Economy.  Such  a  discipline,  it  will  be  seen,  did 
not  tend  to  make  him  a  sensationalist  in  metaphysics,  or  a 
utilitarian  in  morals.  Dr.  Walker's  mind  made  itself  felt, 
not  only  in  the  recitation-room,  but  in  the  pulpit  of  the  col- 
lege chapel,  where  he  preached  more  frequently  than  any 
one  else,  and  where  Johnson  attended  with  unfailing  punc- 


MEMOIR.  b 

tuality.  I  never  knew  him  to  be  absent  from  the  daily 
morning  and  evening  prayers. 

With  Professor  Channing  he  read  Whately's  Logic  and 
Rhetoric,  and  Campbell's  Rhetoric,  and  found  labor  of  love 
in  preparing  the  Themes  and  Forensics  ;  acquiring  a  purity 
of  style  under  the  criticisms  of  Channing  and  by  the  aid 
of  Walker's  sound  judgment,  which  was  never  permanently 
affected. 

He  took  the  prescribed  course  in  French  to  the  end  of 
the  senior  year,  reading  with  Professor  Longfellow  Gil 
Bias  and  some  plays  of  Moliere.  These  exercises  were  in 
a  room  in  University  Hall,  not  ordinarily  used  as  a  recita- 
tion-room, and  not  arranged  with  benches,  but  carpeted, 
and  furnished  with  chairs  around  a  long  table.  And  my 
recollection  of  them  is  of  something  unconstrained  and  in- 
formal that  was  delightful.  I  do  not  think  that  Johnson 
studied  Italian  or  German  in  college.  [Italian  he  never 
liked ;  but  with  German  he  afterwards  became  thoroughly 
familiar.] 

In  Latin  and  Greek  he  took  the  extended  course  to  the 
end  of  the  Senior  year,  reading  Horace,  Juvenal,  Persius, 
and  the  De  Officiis ;  Herodotus,  several  books  of  the  Iliad, 
Alcestis,  Antigone,  Prometheus,  CEdipus  Tyrannus,  and 
The  Clouds. 

Of  his  own  estimate  of  his  college  studies  we  get 
some  hint  from  letters  of  a  later  time.  Thus  in  1880, 
he  writes,  speaking  of  the  death  of  George  Ripley  :  — 

"  I  shall  never  forget  the  glorious  work  that  his 
Philosophical  Series  did  in  the  great  dawn  of  Amer- 
ican thought,  —  'Specimens  of  Foreign  Literature,' 
it  was  called.  'Jouffroy's  Moral  Philosophy'  [in 
this  series]  was  the  most  delightful  text-book  I  ever 
studied.  And  my  happiest  recollections  of  Harvard 
run  to  my  work  on  this,  and  on  Cousin's  Criticism 
of  Locke." 


6  MEMOIR. 

And  in  reference  to  his  classical  studies,  here  is  an 
extract  from  a  letter  written  in  1874,  to  his  friend 
E.  H.  Manning,  who  had  sent  him  an  address  deliv- 
ered at  the  opening  of  an  academy  in  Ipswich  :  — 

In  what  YOU  say  of  the  Latin  and  Greek  languages,  in 
their  relation  to  practical  culture  lor  common  life,  I  in  gen- 
eral very  well  agree,  though  I  think  you  intimate  less  faith 
in  those  languages  as  stimulants  to  that  sense  of  beauty, 
order,  and  law,  which  you  so  well  characterize  as  the  sub- 
stance of  science,  than  my  own  experience  will  indorse. 
My  whole  deliverance  from  miracles,  etc.,  into  theological 
freedom,  —  such  sense  of  order,  beauty,  and  harmony  in 
the  world  and  life,  and  such  recognition  of  the  cosmical  (or 
universal)  in  thought,  and  the  radical  in  jDhilosophy  as  has 
since  been  developed  in  me.  began  and  was  rooted  in  dis- 
tinct form,  before  physical  science  interested  me  in  any  but 
the  vaguest  and  most  distant  manner.  And  my  whole  joy 
of  discovery  and  inward  revelation  in  these  directions  is 
intimately  associated  with  the  splendid,  clear,  truth-facing 
heathenism  of  my  school  and  college  classics.  You  will 
count  one  man's  experience,  who  has  gone  as  far  as  I  from 
the  old  ways,  as  worth  something  ;  and  you  will  not  wonder 

at  my  looking  a  little  askance  at  A 's  somewhat  cavalier 

treatment  of  studies  which  I  don't  think  he  quite  appre- 
ciates in  their  peculiar  refining,  enlarging  power  over  the 
growing  mind.  You  will,  perhaps,  be  surprised  when  I  tell 
vou  that,  for  my  very  conception  of  Laic  as  at  the  root  of 
all  being,  for  my  belief  in  the  Infinite  as  one  with,  and  not 
apart  from,  the  Cosmos,  for  my  power  to  demand  unity,  de- 
velopment, and  freedom  in  all  processes  of  life,  and  for  my 
philosophy  of  moral  relations,  self-respect,  and  conformity 
to  just  and  real  conditions,  —  I  bless  my  Greek  and  Latin 
classics  more  than  any  other  school-teaching,  or  subsequent 
scientific  study.  And  I  must  add,  that  no  small  part  of 
this  help  comes  in  the  introduction  to  a  foreign  world  of 
language  and  belief     This  of  itself  is  a  wonderful  emanci- 


MEMOIR.  1 

pation,  and  gives  that  shift  of  position  which  conditions 
fresh  and  free  thought.  There  is  a  world  of  liberty  and  a 
range  of  imagination  in  these  disciplines  which  I  think  very 
essential  to  protect  our  American  education  from  tapering 
into  technicalism  and  the  petty  detail  which  has  already 
grown  so  disintegrative  of  solid  thought,  and  free,  broad 
synthesis,  in  the  scientific  text-books  and  studies. 

If  I  had  space  for  some  of  Ms  letters  from  col- 
lege, we  should  see  him  in  his  room,  No.  6  Divinity 
Hall  (of  which  he  sends  a  graphic  description  to  his 
sister),  feeling  himself  with  his  little  library  "richer 
than  Croesus;"  enjoying  the  life,  "where  everything 
is  so  monotonous,  yet  so  interesting ; "  "  studying 
hard,"  and  finding  his  studies  "  remarkably  interest- 
ing, —  not  a  task  but  a  positive  recreation  ; "  getting 
his  '•  marks  "  at  the  President's  study,  always  up  to 
or  very  near  the  maximum  8 ;  visited  by  hazing 
sophomores  ("a  provoking  evil"),  but  "driving  them 
off  with  a  club  ;  "  not  present  at  "  the  great  football 
game  on  the  Delta ;  "  getting,  "  between  6  A.  M.  and 
10|-  P.  M.,"  about  two  hours  a  day  for  exercise,  "which 
generally,  but  not  always  [alas  for  that  not,  I  fear 
too  frequent,]  is  consumed  in  walking  round  the 
town  by  many  beautiful  and  picturesque  routes ; " 
visiting  "  Fresh  Pond  and  Mt.  Auburn  Cemetery,  a 
scene  of  beauty  and  imposing  solemnity ;  "  promis- 
ing to  obey  his  mother's  advice  as  to  health,  "  fully 
aware  that  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance,  as  father 
has  often  told  "  him  ;  attending  on  Thursday  evenings 
the  meetings  for  religious  improvement,  under  the 
direction  of  the  devout  Professor  Henry  Ware,  the 
younger;  "  always  making  it  a  point  to  finish  lessons 
before  going  to  any  meeting  ; "  "much  struck"  with 
a  remark  of  his  Greek  tutor,  Jones  Very,  about  "  the 


8  MEMOIR. 

object  of  study  being  to  fit  ourselves  more  completely 
to  do  God's  will  in  benefiting  mankind ; "  calling 
even  the  Commons'  table  "  excellent ;  "  and  begging 
his  father  not  to  be  anxious  on  his  account,  since  the 
"  temptations  are  very  slight,  and  require  no  very 
great  exercise  of  self-government  and  firmness  to 
resist." 

These  letters  are  full  of  affectionate  messages  to 
every  member  of  his  family  circle.  He  writes  to 
his  younger  sisters,  urging  them  to  keep  diaries,  and 
explaining  at  length  the  methods  and  benefits ;  and 
afterwards  sends  them  word,  "  that  this  diary  busi- 
ness must  not  be  allowed  to  interfere  with  their  les- 
sons." He  is  constantly  solicitous  for  his  mother's 
health  and  her  freedom  from  too  much  household 
care,  and  urges  her  not  to  neglect  walking  out,  and 
is  interested  in  the  progress  of  the  flower-garden  of 
which  she  was  fond,  and  signs  himself,  "  with  every 
feeling  of  love  and  gratitude,  your  affectionate  son." 

So  he  wrote  in  his  Freshman  year,  and  so  he  con- 
tinued to  write  and  to  feel,  only  more  maturely. 

In  one  of  his  first  letters  from  Cambridge  he  speaks 
of  the  great  delight  with  which  he  had  listened  to 
a  sermon  in  the  College  Chapel  from  the  younger 
Henry  Ware.  It  was  the  sermon  on  the  "  Person- 
ality of  God,"  called  out  by  the  address  of  Mr.  Em- 
erson before  the  graduating  class  of  the  Divinity 
School.  That  address,  which  had  been  a  sun-burst  to 
so  many  young  minds,  was  to  most  of  the  elders  an 
ominous  and  baleful  meteor,  "portending  change." 
Mr.  Ware's  sermon  was  meant  as  a  warning  and 
antidote  against  its  supposed  "  Pantheism."  It  drew 
from  Mr.  Emerson  that  delightfully  characteristic 
letter  which   many  of  my  readers  will  remember. 


MEMOIR.  9 

There  is  no  record  of  our  freshman's  having  read 
the  address,  nor  was  he  likely  to  do  so  at  that  time. 
One  would  like  to  know  how  he  would  have  been 
"  struck  "  by  it  had  he  heard  it,  in  view  of  his  later 
developments.  For  the  present,  however,  he  is  —  as 
his  classmate  says  —  "a  conservative  Unitarian  of 
the  school  of  Ware  and  Walker."  Of  his  religious 
thought  and  feeling,  later  in  his  college  life,  we  have 
this  glimpse  :  — 

TO   HIS    SISTER   A. 

May  28,  1841. 

Is  not  this  a  strange  world  that  runs  thoughtlessly  on 
through  all  this  living,  speaking  loveliness,  which  seems  to 
point  every  moment  toward  the  God  whose  hand  is  form- 
ing and  fashioning  all  before  all  eyes  ?  How  few  there 
are  who  seem  to  have  any  but  a  theoretical  belief  that 
there  is  something  at  work  around  us  besides  the  trees,  the 
flowers,  the  clouds,  and  the  sun !  We  see  them  at  work, 
and  ask  no  further  ;  ask  not  who  makes  them  work,  who 
gives  them  all  their  loveliness  and  liberty  and  life.  ,  .  . 
What  should  we  do  but  fall  down  and  adore  before  this 
visible  creation  of  an  invisible  and  all-pervading  Being? 
.  .  .  Thank  Him  that  you  are  able  to  read  in  the  flowers 
the  poetry  of  His  love. 

Johnson  graduated  in  1842,  the  second  in  his 
class,  but  with  health  somewhat  impaired  by  exces- 
sive application  to  study,  and  doubtless  by  other  vio- 
lations or  neglect  of  hygienic  laws,  into  which  stu- 
dious youths  are  apt  to  fall. 

Rest  and  travel,  however,  afterwards  restored  the 
old  tone  and  vigor  of  mind  and  body. 


10  MEMOIR. 


in. 


When  Johnson,  on  entering  college,  had  taken  a 
room  in  Divinity  Hall,  his  pastor  sent  him  the  mes- 
sage that  he  hoped  *'  he  would  remain  there  for  seven 
years,"  —  that  is,  that  he  would  add  to  the  four  years 
of  college  the  three  of  the  Divinity  School.  His 
reply  was,  "  Thank  Mr.  T.  for  his  hint,  but  I  shall 
not  take  it,  begging  his  pardon."  "Nothing  that  he 
ever  said  to  me,"  writes  his  classmate  Jaques,  "  indi- 
cated a  purpose  of  entering  the  ministry."  Never- 
theless, such  a  purpose  grew  up  in  his  mind  and 
heart,  and  in  the  autumn  after  his  graduation  he  be- 
came a  member  of  the  Divinity  School.  It  was  then 
under  the  charge  of  Dr.  Francis  and  Dr.  Noyes,  who, 
owing  to  the  then  extremely  reduced  condition  of 
the  school-funds,  did  the  work  of  four  professors. 

TO    HIS    MOTHER. 

1842. 

I  am  most  anxious  to  see  you  again,  and  tell  you  how  I 
am  and  how  pleasant  my  studies  are.  .  .  .  Meantime  hear 
from  me  that  I  am  greatly  satisfied  with  my  work,  and  that 
the  class  is  a  remarkably  pleasant  and  interesting  one. 
There  is  among  us  great  material  for  laughter  in  the  eccen- 
tricities of  some  of  the  class ;  and  nowhere,  I  beHeve,  is 
there  more  ample  room  for  the  cultivation  of  the  social 
feelings.  Our  studies  are  just  what  we  choose  to  make 
them,  affording  the  means  of  indolence  or  of  great  im- 
provement. I  trust  I  shall  not  so  forget  what  I  owe  to 
religion  and  conscience  and  society,  as  to  neglect  the  ad- 
mirable opportunities  here  presented  for  the  study  of  the 
great  questions  of  religious  belief  and  moral  duty.  Our 
library  is  excellent,  and  we  have  unlimited  freedom  in  the 


AIEMOIR.  11 

use  of  it.    We  are  guided  by  Dr.  Francis  in  the  selection  of 
books,  and  partly  by  our  own  judgment. 

After  all,  what  have  I  to  ask,  but  that  you  should  keep 
yourself  free  from  all  anxiety  ?  And  what  have  I  to  hope, 
except  that  you  do  7iot  allow  cares  of  household  things  to 
disturb  you  ;  and  that  little  F.  gives  you  as  much  pleasure 
as  ever ;  and  that  the  girls  try  to  do  their  part ;  and  that 
you  see  father  in  the  best  of  health  ;  and  that  our  little 
family  circle  is  filled  with  peace  and  good  thoughts  ?  And 
what  have  I  to  tell,  except  that  all  has  gone  well  with  me, 
and  that  I  try  to  fit  myself  for  entering  what  seems  to  be 
the  most  responsible  profession  which  a  man  can  enter. 
Most  gratefully,  your  affectionate  son. 

TO    HIS    SISTER   A. 

December,  1842. 

I  am  sorry  for  the  interruption  of  your  weekly  studies 
of  the  Scriptures.  .  .  .  There  is  a  great  advantage  to  be 
expected  from  the  reading  of  classical  English  literature 
with  a  lady  of  so  much  taste  as  Miss  W.,  yet  you  must  be 
aware  how  inferior  is  this  advantage  to  the  other.  ...  It 
should  be  the  great  work  to  build  up  the  inward  principles. 
True  convictions  can  be  founded  only  on  principles  ;  and 
convictions  are  the  only  light  we  have  to  walk  by.  .  .  . 
No  better  means  of  developing  habits  of  thought  can  be 
devised  than  the  reading  attentively  our  own  literature. 
It  contains  every  species  of  thought  and  every  variety  of 
style.  In  its  older  effusions  there  is  a  simple  sincerity,  an 
earnest  zeal  for  truth,  a  calm  sobriety  of  judgment,  a  strong 
terseness  of  thought  and  expression,  a  fullness  of  reflection, 
and  a  cheerful,  genial  temper,  which  secure  our  sympathy 
and  fill  us  with  love  for  all  things  and  all  beings.  .  .  . 
And  this  is  one  of  the  purest  influences  of  our  early  litera- 
ture that  it  cultivates  your  love  of  the  simple,  childlike 
sentiments,  and  your  reverence  for  the  truth. 


12  MEMOIR. 


TO   HIS   MOTHER. 

A  Spring  Day  (1843?). 

It  is  a  hazy,  dull  hour  of  a  day  of  sweet  promise.  The 
spring  will  come  ;  these  dull,  heavy  clouds  cannot  keep  her 
back.  She  is  coming :  nay,  she  is  present  in  the  promise 
of  her  presence.  For  to  feel  like  spring  is  to  be  in  the 
spring.  I  shall  go  out  soon,  into  the  woods,  to  pick  anem- 
ones and  violets,  where  I  can  watch  the  birds  build,  and 
live  with  them  in  their  little  nests.  They  fly  round  my 
window,  singing  all  day  long,  and  you  don't  know  how 
dismal,  how  almost  bad,  it  seems  to  be  shut  up  over  books. 
If  you  could  come  and  sit  beside  my  window,  sit  till  the 
evening  comes  on  and  the  bright  sunlight  changes  into  the 
serene,  spiritual  moonlight,  you  would  think  this  was  a 
dream-world,  indeed,  and  there  was  no  sorrow  nor  evil 
anywhere,  even  to  the  eye  of  sense.  This  solemn,  gentle 
change  is  the  most  wonderful  and  speaking  thing  we  see. 
We  must  be  religious  when  we  are  watching  it ;  we  can- 
not help  it. 

But  (heaven  save  us)  how  many  cold  creatures  there  are 
who  would  laugh  at  all  this,  and  call  it  silly,  sentimental, 
affected,  and  the  like,  to  think  so  much  of  sunlight  and 
moonlight,  instead  of  attending  to  one's  business.  Well, 
let  them  attend  to  their  business,  only  let  them  leave  us  to 
ours.  Ours  is  to  live  in  the  voice  of  the  all-beautiful  and 
holy  God ;  to  hold  intercourse  with  Him  in  his  sweetest 
shadowings  forth  around  us  and  in  us ;  to  be  perfectly  free 
from  base  bonds  in  the  joyful  and  ever-grateful  life  of  faith 
and  love.  It  is  to  be  with  God  as  much  now,  as  in  the  fu- 
ture life,  which  should  be  but  a  continuation  of  the  presont. 
Each  belongs  alike  to  eternity,  if  we  did  but  understand  it. 

TO    HIS    MOTHER. 

1843. 

I  could  write  far  more  in  answer  to  the  kind  letters  you 
have  written  to  quiet  my  anxiety  about  our  dear  F.,  but 


MEMOIR.  13 

that  I  am  going  to  walk  down  to-morrow  to  visit  you.  Do 
not  be  anxious,  I  pray  you.  .  .  .  It  will  all  be  well,  we  know, 
and  we  will  hope  that  it  will  be  well  without  hard  trial. 
If  prayers,  and  love,  and  tender  care  will  bring  our  dear  one 
back  to  health,  he  will  be  restored.  Our  Father  loveth  him 
and  us  better,  even,  than  we  can  see.  How  beautifully 
doth  sickness  foreshow  the  perfecter  union  with  us  of  those 
whom  we  love,  by  gathering  them  up,  as  it  were,  into  our 
very  hearts'  centre,  so  that  their  spirits  seem  really  there. 

TO   HIS    YOUNGER   SISTERS. 

June,  1843. 

My  dear  Girls,  —  I  am  ready  to  cry  at  not  hearing 
from  you.  What  are  you  doing  ?  Are  you  not  going  to 
let  me  into  any  of  your  little  pleasures  and  plans  ?  My 
heart  bounds  with  yours  in  your  pleasant  hopes,  and  my 
eye  will  see  all  beautiful  things  as  though  it  were  yours. 
Do  let  the  words  you  would  speak  in  your  happiest  mo- 
ments, in  all  their  freshness  and  liveliness,  take  the  form  of 
letters,  and  pass  into  my  heart  as  though  I  were  with  you. 
And  so  I  am  with  you  when  you  call  me. 

What  shall  I  tell  you  of?  Flowers,  birds,  woods,  walks, 
true,  loving,  sincere  books,  —  what  ?  They  are  all  around 
me  here.  And  they  are  so  deep  in  my  love,  and  you  seem 
so  present  to  me,  that  I  cannot  describe  them ;  for  it  seems 
as  though  you  knew  how  they  looked  as  well  as  I.  Tell 
me  how  you  imagine  things  look  about  me. 

Little  Susan  R.  comes  to  my  room  every  now  and  then, 
early  in  the  morning,  to  get  me  to  go  to  ride  with  her 
mother.  But  I  must  see  you^  in  a  letter,  soon,  or  I  shall 
be  miserable.     Your  own  S. 

Meeting  Johnson  in  the  school,  I  was  very  soon 
attracted  to  him  by  certain  similarities  of  taste,  and 
more  by  the  peculiar  earnestness,  ideality,  and  spirit- 
uality of  tone  which  marked  him  out  among  the  rest. 


14  MEMOIR. 

The  "  transcendental  movement "  in  New  England 
was  then  at  full  tide.  The  germs  of  it  had  been  al- 
ready in  Channing's  sermons ;  Dr.  Henry  had  trans- 
lated Cousin's  Criticism  of  Locke ;  Emerson  had 
printed  Nature^  and  the  early  addresses  at  Cam- 
bridge, Dartmouth,  and  Waterville,  —  this  last  his 
completest  expression  of  spiritual  pantheism  —  and 
had  collected  and  edited  the  chapters  of  Sartor 
Hesartus ;  Dr.  Walker  had  given  his  Lowell  Lec- 
tures on  Natural  Religion,  distinctly  based  on  the 
existence  in  man's  nature  of  certain  spiritual  fac- 
ulties, which  he  held  to  be  as  trustworthy  guides  to 
spiritual  truths  as  the  senses  and  understanding  are 
to  physical  facts. 

Johnson  was  a  transcendentalist  by  nature,  a  born 
idealist ;  the  cast  of  his  mind  intuitive  rather  than 
logical.  He  instinctively  sought  spiritual  truths  by 
direct  vision,  not  by  any  processes  of  induction ;  by 
immediate  inward  experience,  rather  than  by  any 
inference  from  outward  experience.  God,  Right, 
Immortality,  were  to  him  realities  of  intuition  ;  that 
is,  of  direct  looking  upon;  shining  by  their  own  light, 
spiritually  discerned,  the  affirmations  of  the  soul. 
But  his  transcendentalism,  which  was  later  to  become 
a  carefully -weighed  rationale  of  thought^  was  now  a 
nature,  a  perception,  a  sentiment,  an  inward,  unar- 
gued faith.  It  began  soon  to  take  on  a  mystical 
phase,  which  led  him  into  some  deep  experiences. 
Something  of  this  will  be  seen  in  the  following  let- 
ters. The  first  of  them  was  sent  to  me  at  Fayal, 
where  I  had  gone  for  a  year. 


MEMOIR.  15 

June,  1843. 
Gone !  My  dear  S.,  you  were  one  of  the  very,  very  few 
here  with  whom  I  could  speak  the  thoughts  that  almost 
force  themselves  out  of  my  lips  wherever  I  am,  though  1 
am  sure  of  being  misunderstood.  Imagine  me  met  with  a 
blank  face  or  a  hopeless  incredulity,  except  in  one  or  two 
directions,  you  well  know  where,  and  bless  me  with  a  fresh 
breeze  from  your  orange-bower.  If  you  could  pour  a  flood 
over  this  cold,  spell-bound  school,  and  awaken  it  to  listen 
to  that  overpowering  voice  of  the  All-filling  Presence, 
which  is  true  inspiration,  you  would  not  be  appreciated, 
but  your  work  would  be  none  the  less  a  true  work.  Truly, 
when  I  say  that  all,  without  and  within  (if  we  can  make 
such  a  division),  its  ever-starry,  eternal  heavens  and  its 
burial-place,  earth,  with  the  immortality  and  the  life  which 
animate  them  and  give  them  figure  ;  the  centre-soul  with 
its  heavings,  and  flutterings,  and  faint  sigh-breathings,  and 
deep,  silent  griefs,  and  high,  brave  heart-beatings,  —  that 
all,  all  this  is  one  love-mystery,  of  which  we  can  only 
say,  — 

"  The  awful  Presence  of  some  unseen  Power 
Floats,  though  unseen,  around  us,"  — 

not  only  floats  around,  but  actually  is  all  things,  is  our- 
selves ;  then  indeed  is  it  most  amazing  to  me,  that  every 
face  around  us  is  not  overladen,  as  the  mid-summer  air  with 
perfume,  with  the  rapture  of  devotion,  burning  and  melt- 
ing self  away ;  and  that  the  mystic  melody  of  all  does  not 
allure  us  all  into  spiritual  unity,  and  make  society  the  great 
form  of  love.  But  then  I  feel  that  what  is  voice  to  me  is 
silence  to  the  great  intellect-world.  And  when  I  wake 
from  the  vision  of  home  into  the  outward  life,  I  wonder 
how  we  can  have  got  so  perverted  as  to  see  the  highest 
thing  as  the  lowest,  mistake  shadow  for  reality,  the  out- 
ward for  the  inward,  the  voice  for  silence,  the  silence  for 
voice.     You  will  understand  me. 


16  MEMOIR. 


TO    HIS    SISTER   A. 

June,  1843. 

How  shall  I  describe  to  you  the  scene  of  the  Hall,  this 
hot,  sultry,  dreamy,  summer  weather !  No  place  ever 
looked  so  hospitable ;  its  doors  all  flung  wide ;  the  win- 
dows open,  the  blue  heaven  pours  itself  in  with  the  fresh 
breeze.  .  .  .  For  all  we  say  about  exhausting  heats  at  noon, 
and  our  being  then  utterly  unfit  for  anything,  I  am  per- 
suaded that  the  sun  at  his  zenith  is  the  voice  calling  the 
spirit  to  hers.  "  We  can  only  dream  then  ; "  and  what  are 
the  dreams  of  a  pure  spirit?  The  highest  life  it  lives. 
"  We  cannot  work  then."  Yes,  blessed  be  God,  who  has 
given  a  sweet  season  in  the  day  when  his  love-warm  hand 
presses  the  weary  body,  and  self-forgetfulness  steals  over 
the  earth-worn  and  anxious  spirit  through  its  consuming 
might,  so  that  the  elastic  breath  of  the  higher  soul  may  rise 
unfettered  into  her  native  air,  and  sing  her  untaught  mel- 
odies and  realize  her  highest  longing.  Blessed  be  the  spirit 
of  the  summer  noon  ! 

You  would  laugh  to  see  my  stunted  flowers  [in  the 
Divinity  Hall  gardens].  I,  who  love  growth  and  cannot 
bear  to  see  anything  still,  to  be  unable  to  make  my  choice 
flowerlings  stir!  I  am  becoming  ashamed  of  their  indo- 
lence. Can  it  be  they  have  reached  maturity  ?  But  they 
are  not  rich  or  bright.  They  are  like  those  awfully  old- 
faced  children,  who  have  been  made  little  men  and  women. 
This  is  the  fault  of  the  parents  very  often.  Is  n't  that 
view  of  the  matter  likely  to  make  me  stretch  my  face,  when 
I  think  what  sort  of  a  parent  I  have  been  to  these  little 
prematurely  grown,  and  now  obstinately  still,  flowers  ?  But 
I  am  hopeful  of  them  yet.  Bad  habits  in  a  child  but  a 
few  weeks  old  are  not  irremedial^e. 

July  9,  1843. 

I  went  in  the  forenoon  to  see  the  menagerie,  because  T 
had  heard  so  much  of  Herr  Driesbach's  power  over  ani- 


MEMOIR.  17 

mals.  This  power  of  fascination  is  a  hint  at  a  great  truth 
in  spiritual  inliuences.  Man  has  within  him  a  power  of 
will,  which,  when  guided  and  inspired  by  love,  can  reduce 
all  things  to  itself,  and  mould  the  world  to  its  good  pleas- 
ure. This  power  is  in  every  being ;  but  in  none  is  it  ever 
fully  developed.  .  .  .  There  is  a  great  mystery  in  these  se- 
cret influences  which  thoughtless  people  little  dream  of,  and 
which  common  sense,  so  called,  cares  nothing  about.  In 
the  wonderful  manner  in  which,  through  books,  the  spirits 
of  other  men,  long  since  dead,  enter  into  and  inspire  ours  ; 
in  the  eloquent  language  of  eye  and  lip  which,  without 
words,  merely  by  expression,  conveys  deepest  feelings ;  in 
the  presence  in  our  souls  of  strange  presentiments,  intu- 
itions of  higher  knowledge  than  science  or  learning  can 
give,  —  voices  which  seem  the  presence  of  other  spirits  in 
ours  ;  which  make  us  feel  often  that  death,  so  far  from  re- 
moving our  dear  friends  from  us,  brings  them  nearer  to  our 
souls,  places  them  in  our  souls  so  that  they  cannot  be  lost ; 
—  in  all  these  wonderful  ways  we  see  dimly  the  unveiling 
of  holy  mysteries  which  the  future  is  to  fully  open  to  us  ; 
mysteries  which  we  can  even  now,  in  our  sublimer  and  ho- 
lier secret  moments,  feel  trying  to  disclose  themselves  to  us. 
But,  my  dearest  A.,  what  has  possessed  me  to  run  on 
from  Herr  Driesbach  into  these  spiritual  flights,  which, 
perhaps,  you  may  not  fancy,  though  I  long  to  have  you 
fancy  them? 

FROM    HIS    DIARY. 

1843. 

On  Monday  morning  the  exercise  with  Dr.  F.  was,  as 
usual,  very  uninteresting.  Worse  than  all,  I  was  the  un- 
lucky means  of  setting  on  fire  a  hot  controversy  about  tran- 
scendentalism. Out  of  these  flames  I  keep  myself  always  ; 
first,  because  I  hate  controversy,  —  something  repels  me 
from  it  and  shuts  my  lips ;  and  second,  because  my  highest 
intuitions  are  not  things  of  argument.  They  find  no  weap- 
ons for  self-defense.     To  have  them  opposed  is  as  over- 


18  MEMOIR. 

whelming  to  me  as  to  have  it  denied  that  the  sun  shines  at 
this  moment.  Then,  to  hear  the  most  serious  truths  treated 
with  the  levity  and  rough,  proud  uncharitableness  of  so- 
called  common  sense,  —  this  is  a  profanation  which  shall 
not  be  prolonged  by  me.  But  the  point  was  this:  De 
Wette  spoke  of  self-love.  Dr.  F.  asked  me  what  I  thought 
of  it.  I  told  him  that  true  self-love  was  the  highest  life ; 
that  when  we  rise  out  of  the  individual  self  we  become 
one  with  the  universal  self.  This  set  the  tongues  of  word- 
fighters  in  motion.  J.  R.  thought  the  expression  universal 
self  a  good  one  ;  F.  and  B.,  and  others,  not.  One  thought 
it  arrogant,  and  another  would  supply  something  else.  And 
then  arose  a  quarrel  about  natural  instincts,  one  complete 
mass  of  misunderstanding  throughout.  It  is  in  my  power 
to  see  wherein  the  root  of  these  contentions  lies.  It  lies 
in  words.  I  have  been  in  a  transcendental  and  in  a  com- 
mon sense  life,  and  the  meanings  which  each  attaches  to 
particular  words  are  clear  to  me.  I  laid  my  head  on  my 
arms  and  tried  not  to  hear  the  idle  debate. 

In  the  afternoon  G.  F.  read  a  fine  dissertation  on  infi- 
delity. He  took  a  liberal  view,  though  rather  severe  on 
those  liberals  who  differed  from  his  own  liberalism.  I  had 
prepared  something  which  I  did  not  read,  the  time  was  so 
far  spent.  Infidelity,  I  showed,  was  only  insincerity  ;  that 
was  all  the  definition  I  could  give  the  word.  No  sincere 
man  is  an  infidel. 

Among  his  papers  of  this  period  there  is  a  bundle 
of  MS.  marked  Private  Phases  of  Feeling  at  the 
Divinity  School.  Transcendental  Reveries;  with  a 
note  appended,  "  This  phase  lasted  but  a  short  time ; 
yet  a  very  effervescent  state  it  was  while  it  lasted." 
They  embody  devout  meditations,  mystic  yearnings, 
the  strivings  of  an  earnest  spirit  after  completer  sense 
of  reality,  after  more  perfect  union  with  God  ;  strug- 


MEMOIR.  19 

gles  vnth  moods  of  self  and  doubt  and  coldness  ;  but 
through  all  an  inmost  faith  that  never  deserts  him. 
Among  them  is  a  paper  of  many  sheets,  in  which  he 
had  written  on  one  side  of  the  page  a  series  of  facts 
and  laws  drawn  from  the  reading  of  scientific  books ; 
the  corresponding  column  was  to  have  been  filled 
with  their  spiritual  correspondences.  He  thinks  some 
study  of  science  might  keep  him  from  *'  breathing  a 
too  ethereal  air."  At  this  time  he  was  a  reader  of 
Fenelon :  I  remember  his  telling  me  how  much  had 
been  to  him  the  essay,  De  V Existence  de  Dieu. 

1843. 

I  once  confounded  truth  with  actuality,  that  is,  I  thought 
truth  was  in  the  changeable  and  transient  forms,  or  rather 
in  our  ideas  of  those  forms. 

I  am  troubled  sometimes  by  nameless  shadows  of  doubt 
that  will  press  upon  me,  trying  Jo  "convince  my  intellect 
that  my  heart  has  settled  not  into  a  real  but  an  imagina- 
tive faith.  My  good  Fenelon  would  tell  me  that  this 
shows  me  I  am  not  enough  in  love  with  God,  that  I  re- 
serve myself  through  fear  and  shame.  But,  as  with  the 
struggling  Moravian,  "  I  aim  at  Thee,  yet  from  Thee  stray." 
I  feel  continually  a  want  of  insight  —  that  great  stone 
which  stands  between  me  and  my  Maker  and  Father,  even 
in  my  most  religious  moments,  if  I  dare  call  them  so.  But 
let  my  faith  answer,  —  O  that  it  might  sincerely  answer, — 
"  When  it  is  fit  for  thee  thou  shalt  have  it :  now  simply 
wait  and  be  satisfied  with  letting  the  power  of  God  work, 
in  its  seemingly  formless,  hidden  way,  its  intended  and 
certain  efi'ect." 

A  man  shall,  must,  be  his  own  priest.  But  then  he  must 
be  a  true  priest,  not  a  slave  nor  a  vulture.  The  true  priest 
never  speaks  of  his  right,  he  only  shows  his  might ;  and  that 
not  as  his  own.  And  what  is  the  true  priest  ?  I  know 
not  in  what  can  consist  his  siojht,  but  in  a  larorer  share  of 


20  MEMOIK. 

that  love  aod  worship  which  are  hidden  in  every  soul,  and 
which  it  is  his  work  to  reveal  to  men  in  themselves. 


SICKNESS. 

Thou,  Lord,  hast  taken  all  my  strength  away, 

Both  from  the  spirit  and  her  faithful  form 

The  bodily  instrument ;  and  now  decay 

The  powers  that  prompted  fearlessness  in  storm, 

And  energy,  faith-kindled  sight,  whereby 

I  felt  as  on  a  warm  aspiring  hill 

Watching  the  changing  forms  in  earth  and  sky. 

Men  and  their  works ;  and  from  a  higher  Will 

Having  interi^retations,  in  a  trance 

Of  spirit,  through  theu'  holiness  and  love. 

A  spell  of  mystery  was  on  me,  and  a  sense 

As  of  a  presence  that  with  boundless  rove 

Gave  joys  unasked,  and  worthy  self-esteem. 

But  Thou  tak'st  baqk  "  the  visionary  gleam  " 

Into  Thyself  ;  I  strive  in  vain  to  see  ; 

And  till  Thou  come  again,  must  keep  me  trustfully. 


IV. 

In  connection  with  these  inward  experiences  we 
find  him  more  than  once  speaking  of  feeble  health. 
That  may  have  been  partly  cause,  partly  result.  Be- 
fore the  end  of  his  second  year  in  the  school  a  change 
of  scene  and  occupation  seemed  needful.  In  May, 
1844,  he  set  out  on  a  voyage  to  Europe  and  a  year's 
travel,  in  company  with  his  townsman,  Washington 
Very.  New  York,  where  they  waited  the  sailing  of 
the  packet-ship,  the  Gladiator,  in  which  they  had 
taken  passage,  seemed  to  him  "full  of  magnificence 
and  of  misery."     The  most  beautiful  thing  he  saw 


MEMOIK.  21 

there  was  the  old  Park  fountain,  "  pouring  its  pas- 
sionate streams  aloft ;  they  call  it  the  Maid  of  the 
Mist;  I  would  rather  call  it  the  Love-Spring ^  And 
the  saddest  thing  was  a  poor,  ragged  girl,  weeping 
under  the  pillars  of  a  church.  But  his  youthful  op- 
timism suggests,  "  All  that  we  can  do  is  to  feel  that 
suffering  is  not  what  it  seems ;  and  I  believe  that 
to  these  suffering  thousands  come  moments  of  more 
beautiful  enjoyment  than  are  ever  known  to  the 
stagnant  lives  of  the  rich."  He  sees  also  some  paint- 
ings—  a  foretaste  of  European  galleries.  "A  Ma- 
donna, especially,  had  a  divine  look  of  musing  which 
seemed  to  penetrate  the  future,  in  the  strong  proph- 
ecy of  a  mother's  heart."  Another  picture,  "  repre- 
senting a  satyr  bound  by  Apollo  in  the  woods :  a 
nymph  seems  to  be  asking  wherefore  this  taking 
captive  of  nature  by  art."  His  new  delight  is  crit- 
ical as  well  as  appreciative ;  "  a  head  of  St.  John  in 
Patmos,  inspiration  in  the  parted  lips  and  in  the 
large  angelic  eye  :  but  what  harmony  has  this  lawyer- 
forehead  with  a  contemplative,  mystic  spirit?" 

The  Gladiator  proved  "a  goodly  bark,"  but  not 
so  large  as  his  '*  creative  fancy  had  painted  her  .  .  . 
and  state-rooms  are  poor  apologies  for  the  name." 

From  London  he  writes  :  — 

June  15,  1844. 
When  I  look  back  on  that  sea-life  of  three  weeks,  I 
count  it  among  the  grandest  seasons  of  my  life.  The  sea- 
life  has  been  called  monotonous,  but  I  did  not  find  it  so. 
There  is  wonderful  variety  in  the  appearance  of  the  waters. 
The  waves,  rising  and  falling,  pass  into  the  most  beautiful 
and  strange  forms.  .  .  .  Now  a  high  wave  would  sink 
softly  down  into  a  shell  of  the  most  delicate  and  dainty 
mould ;  now  the  crests  would  look  like  sprinkled  flower- 


22  MEMOIR. 

beds ;  and  now  the  Nereides  would  scatter  soft  showers  on 
each  other,  as  wave  met  wave.  The  sea  rose  now  in  huge 
long  walls  behind,  then  passed  down  under  us  and  lifted  us 
high  over  itself,  then  smoothed  away,  and  there  lay  behind 
us  a  long,  long  vale.  Ships  hung  in  the  horizon  every  lit- 
tle while,  vapor-like,  and  we  watched  hours  to  see  if  they 
were  coming  near.  I  thought  and  dreamed  of  their  won- 
derful fearlessness.  ...  At  night,  especially,  you  cannot 
conceive  the  wonder  of  the  scene.  The  wake  of  the  ship, 
where  the  water  by  day  is  full  of  gurgling  whirlpools  clos- 
ing over  the  ship's  cleft,  so  dark  and  gloomy,  by  night  is 
a  stream  of  the  most  beautiful  milk-white,  touched  with  a 
mysterious  glory.  Softer  and  brighter  than  the  moonlight, 
even,  it  seems  to  come  neither  from  within  nor  from  with- 
out. All  along  this  pure  stream  close  in  the  black  walls 
of  the  sea,  which  sends  its  circular  waves  through  it,  half- 
disturbing  its  beauty ;  and  all  through  this  blackness  rush 
millions  on  millions  of  torch-like  fires,  and  here  and  there, 
down  in  the  sky-depths,  gleams  dimly  a  snow-like  meteor, 
then  shoots  away ;  and  out  into  the  infinite  darkness  wan- 
der here  and  there  these  sparks,  as  into  their  home.  .  .  . 
All  the  wonders  of  the  heavens,  too,  are  more  wonderful 
here  than  where  variety  spreads  all  over  the  earth.  .  .  . 
If  I  was  ever  despondent,  there  were  letters  and  home  to- 
kens, and  deep,  true  books.  You  may  be  sure  they  helped 
me,  and  home  would  come  to  me  in  my  dreams.  .  .  . 

But  I  have  not  told  you  of  our  passengers  ;  eight  we 
were,  in  the  cabin,  —  one  lady,  two  Englishmen,  a  Scotch- 
man, a  German,  and  three  Americans,  besides  the  Irish 
captain  who  told  stories  to  make  us  laugh,  abused  the  poor 
black  steward,  and  flirted  a  little  with  the  lady.  All  we  of 
stranger  lands  soon  felt  ourselves  brothers;  and  a  merry 
time  they  had  of  it  with  shuffle-board,  and  card-playing, 
and  scolding  about  national  superiorities.  They  called  me 
the  "  abstract  man,"  because  I  sat  apart  so  much.  .  .  . 

There  was  a  beautiful  girl  who  had  taken  passage  in  the 


MEMOIR.  23 

Bteerage,  and  used  to  sit  all  the  time  on  deck,  because  she 
could  not  be  with  the  gross  company  down  there.  I  be- 
lieve M.  had  quite  a  platouic  affection  for  her.  She  lived 
in  Fareham,  a  little  paradise  just  out  of  Portsmouth,  and 
there  we  left  her.  I  took  much  interest  in  her,  for  she 
seemed  most  open  and  warm-hearted. 

I  will  not  try  to  describe  the  first  vision  of  England: 
those  white,  bald  cliffs,  so  battlement-like ;  and  the  groves, 
and  white  houses  imbedded  in  them  which  a  glass  showed 
us  ;  and  the  little  stone  town,  with  the  castle  beside  it ;  the 
stillness  of  the  bay  into  which  we  glided ;  the  peaceful, 
pensive  sun,  setting  over  the  low  hills  just  closing  us  in ; 
and  through  all  this  twilight,  spiritual  scene,  the  thought 
of  a  new  world  we  had  found  beyond  the  deep.  ...  I 
watched  most  intently  for  the  first  man  on  shore. 

The  beautiful  English  rural  scenery !  The  wonderfully 
tall,  rich  trees  ;  the  little  thatched,  bird's-nest-like  stone 
cottages,  with  their  hedges  of  neatly  trimmed  buck-thorn, 
and  profusion  of  trained  flowers  ;  wild-flowers  sprinkled 
everywhere  among  the  grain,  —  purple,  yellow,  and  in- 
tensest  red ;  fields  of  clover  and  poppies ;  sheep  multitudi- 
nous, and  shepherdesses  watching  them ;  women  in  broad 
bonnets,  and  their  husbands  and  lovers  making  hay.  .  .  . 

He  soon  falls  in  with  the  pest  of  poetic  travelers, 
the  professional  guide  :  — 

Oh,  what  a  torment  one  was  in  Winchester  Cathedral, 
telling  in  a  cold,  stereotyped  tone,  whose  monument  was 
this  and  whose  effigy  that :  —  there  among  the  heights 
and  depths  of  arches  old !  These  people  cannot  be  es- 
caped. I  wonder  if  they  would  allow  themselves  to  be 
paid  for  keeping  away  from  a  visitor  who  believes  that 
cathedrals  have  somewhat  to  tell  of  themselves  ? 

From  Amsterdam  he  writes,  "  I  am  going  to  say  a 
word  in  favor  of  these  poor  Dutch  strivers  with  the 
sea,"  whom  "  poets  and  travelers  like  to  laugh  at." 


24  MEMOIR. 

Amsterdam,  June  22. 
I  cannot  walk  about  without  seeing  how  this  people  are 
possessed  with  the  one  great  idea  of  their  life's  being  a 
struggle  with  ever-threatening  power,  and  that  power  they 
have  come  at  last  to  love.  Hence  they  deal  so  in  water ; 
women  washing  the  middle  of  the  streets,  pouring  on 
water,  water,  and  sweeping  still ;  women  washing  clothes 
in  the  canals  and  ditches  ;  women  sailing  in  flat  boats, 
cleaning  fish,  holding  markets  .  .  .  incapable  of  idleness. 
All  this  comes  of  the  great  sense  of  the  ocean's  presence 
and  power.  This  feeling  of  the  need  of  effort  keeping 
them  so  full  of  unconquerable  trust  in  effort. 

In  the  Dutch  painting  lie  finds  the  same  pains- 
taking and  elaborate  effort,  in  its  minute  and  per- 
fect reproduction  of  nature.  "  All  this,  you  see,  is 
of  a  piece  with  the  whole  life  of  this  laboring  race." 

In  Antwerp  he  hears  the  music  from  its  lofty 
fretted  belfry,  which  "  realized  his  ideas  of  chiming 
bells,"  of  which  he  had  dreamed  years  ago,  when  he 
sent  to  his  mother  the  words  of  Moore's  "  Evening 
Bells,"  begging  her  to  learn  and  sing  them.  He 
hopes  that  "  before  long  America  will  spare  some 
love  for  art,  and  such  music  as  is  good  for  gentle 
hearts,  and  needed  by  them  too,  will  be  attainable 
there." 

Up  the  Rhine  to  Heidelberg,  where  he  found  the 
students  "  most  kindly  attentive  to  strangers."  And 
so  through  Switzerland.  There  his  itinerary  records 
all  the  magic  names  of  places  that  kindle  into  flames 
the  embers  in  an  old  traveler's  memory.  In  October 
he  is  in  Rome  among  the  ruins :  — 

Lonely,  beautiful  columns,  broken  arches  of  colossal 
aqueducts,  mountains  of  mingled  grass,  earth,  and  cement, 
all   apart   from   the   peopled  city,  are   about   me.     This 


MEMOIR.  25 

morning  I  stood  in  the  Coliseum ;  height  above  height  of 
broken,  moss-covered,  massy  arches  rose  all  around  to  the 
outermost  wall,  ragged,  bold,  and  lone,  row  behind  row ; 
the  sunny  green  fields  beyond.  ...  A  temple  beautiful  as 
peace  dedicated  by  its  builders  to  barbarism.  .  .  .  Those 
precipitous,  rent  arches,  are  rough,  almost  terrible,  but  the 
wild  flowers  grow  over  them.  There  is  something  verily 
Alpine  about  them.  The  simplicity  must  needs  be  de- 
stroyed by  those  yellow  stands  called  stations,  representing 
in  wretched  pictures  the  successive  scenes  in  the  life  of 
Christ.  Everywhere  in  this  country  one  meets  such 
things,  the  ideas  of  which  are  so  beautiful,  but  so  mocked 
by  the  careless  way  of  expressiug  them.  We  saw  a  few 
lines  of  soldiers  marching  through,  and  thought  of  the 
hosts  of  Rome. 

After  pages  of  detail,  he  says  :  — 

But  enough  of  Rome  ;  spare  us,  you  will  cry,  such  ram- 
bling map-work ;  tell  us  of  the  Apennines,  the  paintings 
of  Florence. 

The  Apennines,  stern  wild  crags,  crowds  of  them !  we 
went  up,  up,  up,  and  slept  at  the  top.  It  was  moonlight, 
and  we  sang  together  "  Home,  sweet  home  ! "  you  can  judge 
with  what  feelings.  Then,  when  we  got  into  the  supper 
room,  we  tried  to  grow  jolly,  by  dancing,  capering,  and 
singing,  till  we  were  stopped  by  the  coming  of  the  maiden 
in  the  straw  hat  bringing  the  tea  and  bread.  Were  we  to 
blame  ?  Poor  wanderers  !  Joy  and  sadness  come  very 
nigh  each  other  in  a  wanderer's  life.  .  .  .  But  how  beau- 
tiful even  to  sadness,  that  descent  to  Florence ;  a  rainbow 
over  the  mountains  eastward ;  the  sun  setting  magnificently ; 
the  still  hill-sides  covered  with  woods,  gardens,  and  white 
villas,  and  ending  in  the  loveliest  plain.  My  journal  is 
full  of  rhapsodies  on  the  Val  d'Arno.  .  .  . 

Ah,  Florence  is  the  city  of  my  love  on  this  continent, 
after  all !     The  Val  d'Arno,  in  which  it  lies,  all  girt  about 


26  MEMOIR. 

with  Apennines,  is  the  loveliest  vale  of  lovely  Italy.  And 
what  is  great  or  good  or  beautiful  that  Florence  does  not 
tell  of  ?  I  looked  for  the  gardens  of  the  Medici,  where  the 
Platonist  scholars  gathered  to  revive  the  art  and  wisdom 
of  old  Greece  on  Tuscan  ground.  I  found  the  villa  some 
miles  from  the  city,  but  the  gardens  for  scholars  and  muses 
and  artists  are  in  her  midst,  and  scattered  along  the  still 
blue  vale.  The  picture-gallery  of  the  Pitti  Palace  is  the 
best  I  have  ever  seen,  except,  perhaps,  that  at  Bologna 
[he  would  not  have  made  that  exception  later].  But  the 
finest  thinff  Florence  has  for  me  is  the  ojardens  of  the  Bo- 
boli,  a  true  Academic  grove.  .  .  .  Florence  is  full  of  priests 
as  Rome,  in  the  black  cocked  hat,  the  black  gown,  or  the 
snuff-colored  coarse  frock  of  the  Capuchins,  tied  with  a 
rope,  and  topped  by  a  falling  cowl ;  they  are  very  dirty, 
though.  The  Dominicans  and  Augustines  are  cleaner  and 
more  gentlemanly  looking,  and  the  boys  dressed  in  priests' 
garments  and  hats  are  very  pleasant  to  see.  Often  at 
night  goes  by,  with  muffled  tread,  black  veils  over  their 
faces,  with  small  holes  for  seeing,  bare-legged,  and  two  by 
two,  —  the  train  of  the  Misericordia,  bearing  in  a  black, 
closed  palanquin,  some  invalid  to  the  hospital,  perhaps 
some  body  to  the  tomb. 


In  1845  he  is  back  again  in  the  Divinity  School, 
joining  the  class  below  that  which  he  had  first 
entered.  As  we  had  each  been  absent  a  year,  we 
were  again  together.  He  returned  much  refreshed 
in  mind  and  body,  though  he  was  never  thoroughly 
free  from  the  bodily  ailments  belonging  to  his  bil- 
ious temperament.  The  mystical  phase  had  ma- 
tured into  a  deep  spiritual  life,  which  gave  to  all  his 
intellectual  work  a  profounder  quality  that  charac- 


MEMOIR.  27 

terized  him  above  the  rest  of  us.  The  freedom  with 
which  he  treated  every  subject  had  its  root  in  this 
depth,  and  was  never  irreverent.  It  was  simply  his 
natural  pathway  to  the  truth  he  sought ;  simply  his 
native  sincerity.  His  essays  read  before  the  school 
were  often  combated,  and  not  always  understood. 
I  remember  well  the  indignation  I  felt  when,  after  a 
kindliug  paper  of  his,  the  honest  but  somewhat  dry- 
minded  professor  began :  "  Mr.  Johnson,  I  have  lis- 
tened to  your  essay  with  the  greatest  pain.  If  you 
go  on  in  that  way,  you  will  end  in  losing  sight  of  all 
moral  distinctions."  Of  course,  it  was  an  entire  mis- 
understanding. Johnson,  even  in  his  most  mystic,  or 
in  his  most  iconoclastic  mood,  never  came  near  los- 
ing sight  of  moral  distinctions.  His  natural  mirth- 
fulness,  which  all  through  his  life  was  so  character- 
istic of  him,  was  never  inconsistent  with  this  genuine 
seriousness,  but  only  played  over  it  in  flashes  of  sun- 
shine. It  was  always  innocent  and  hearty,  never 
satirical  or  cynical ;  simply  a  quick  sense  and  lively 
enjoyment  of  things  incongruous  or  ludicrous. 

He  gave  all  due  attention  to  the  studies  and  work 
of  the  school.  It  was  the  custom  at  that  time  to 
"  allow  "  the  members  of  the  senior  class  to  preach 
in  the  neighboring  churches  as  a  '•  labor  of  love." 
They  were  to  try  their  'prentice  hand,  but  without 
money  and  without  price,  so  as  not  to  interfere  with 
the  graduates  of  the  school  who  were  not  yet  "  set- 
tled." So  Johnson  preached  his  first  public  sermon 
in  the  pulpit  of  his  father's  classmate.  Dr.  Lamson 
of  Dedham.  He  soon  after  preached  in  the  pulpit 
just  vacated  by  Theodore  Parker,  his  kinsman  by 
marriage,  in  West  Roxbury. 

Mr.  Parker  had  for  a  year  been  preaching  in  Bos- 


28  MEMOIR. 

ton  on  Sunday  mornings,  supplying  as  best  he  could 
the  pulpit  which  he  still  held  in  West  Roxbury,  and 
preaching  there  himself  in  the  afternoons.  His  name 
had  by  that  time  become  a  dread  and  a  dislike  to  all 
conservative  Unitarianism.  He  had  first  startled  it 
by  the  sermon  on  "  The  Transient  and  Permanent  in 
Christianity,"  preached  at  Mr.  Shackford's  ordination 
at  South  Boston ;  which  was  followed  up  by  the  ser- 
mon on  Jesus  given  at  the  "  Thursday  Lecture."  As 
we  read  them  now,  in  the  midst  of  the  larger  toler- 
ance and  broader  theology,  which  we  owe  so  largely 
to  Parker  himself,  who  bore  the  brunt  of  the  battle 
—  the  sacrifice  for  our  peace,  taking  into  his  breast 
the  sheaf  of  theological  spears,  and  making  a  way  for 
our  liberty  —  it  is  difficult  to  understand  the  excite- 
ment which  they  made.  The  Unitarians,  especially, 
were  most  eager  to  disclaim  one  of  their  own  number 
who  spoke  of  Jesus  as  a"  Galilean  youth,"  though  he 
added  a  glowing  rhetoric  of  praise  of  him,  and  who 
called  the  miracles  of  the  Gospel  "  only  poetry,"  com- 
paring them  to  the  marvels  related  of  Apollonius  of 
Tyana,  and  to  the  labors  of  Hercules ;  who  even 
spoke  of  the  "  elements  "  of  the  communion  as  "  bak- 
er's bread  and  grocer's  wine."  It  was  not  always 
what  he  said,  but  also  his  way  of  saying  it,  that  of- 
fended. He  had  little  reverence  for  the  reverences 
of  others  toward  things  which  he  did  not  think 
worthy  of  reverence.  He  believed  wit  and  even  sar- 
casm fair  weapons  as  against  superstitions.  Kind- 
hearted  as  he  was,  and  even  tenderly  sensitive  to 
sympathy,  he  was  ready  to  meet  attacks  upon  his 
positions,  not  like  Emerson  by  ignoring  them,  but 
standing  up  in  their  defense  and  the  defense  of  his 
right  to  hold  them  and  still  to  call  himself  a  Unita- 


I 


MEMOIR.  29 

rian  and  a  Christian,  when  this  was  denied.  He 
fought  a  good  fight  —  for  he  had  sturdy  Lexington 
blood  in  his  veins.  He  even  enjoyed  the  discomfit- 
ure of  his  foes  under  the  sharp  edge  of  his  logic  and 
the  keen  points  of  his  wit.  The  Unitarians  lost  a 
grand  opportunity.  They  might  have  said,  "  We  dis- 
agree entirely  with  Mr.  Parker  upon  some  points 
which  we  think  essential  to  Christianity,  since  we 
have  always  been  told  and  we  believe  that  it  is  a  su- 
pernatural revelation,  of  whose  truth  miracles  are  the 
only  possible  attestation  ;  nevertheless,  as  we  have  al- 
ways claimed  and  proclaimed  liberty  of  thought,  so 
now  we  defend  Mr.  Parker  in  his  liberty  of  thought 
and  speech,  not  holding  ourselves  in  any  way  respon- 
sible for  what  he  may  think  or  say.  And  as  we  have 
long  declared  that  '  righteousness  is  the  ground  of 
the  Unitarian  denomination,'  and  that  '  character  is 
above  creed,'  and  that  '  fidelity  in  duty,  not  accuracy 
of  belief,'  is  the  essential  thing,  so  now  we  will  not 
deny  to  Mr.  Parker  the  Unitarian  or  the  Christian 
name  and  fellowship."  But  they  did  not  say  that 
—  with  a  few  honorable  exceptions  ;  and  Parker  was 
virtually  excommunicated. 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  this  state  of  things  that 
Johnson  finished  his  studies  in  the  Divinity  School 
and  began  to  preach.  His  theological  views  were 
not  then  so  clearly  defined  as  at  a  later  time,  but  he 
had  no  hesitation  in  placing  himself  by  Mr.  Parker's 
side.  I  do  not  think  that  it  cost  him  any  conscious 
effort  of  courage  ;  it  was  his  natural  and  instinctive 
position  ;  but  none  the  less  it  ivas  brave.  It  lost  him, 
and  he  knew  that  it  must,  the  opportunity  of  preach- 
ing in  the  larger  number  of  Unitarian  pulpits.  It 
made  the  way  narrow  for  him  into  the  exercise  of 


30  MEMOIR. 

his  chosen  profession.     But  his  path  was  in  every 
sense  straight^  and  he  did  not  hesitate. 

Mr.  Parker  himself  did  hesitate  to  involve  any  of 
the  young  ministers  in  his  own  unpopularity. 

TO    THEODORE    PARKER. 

1846. 
The  hymn-book  is  so  far  advanced  now  that  we  must 
gather  in  all  our  materials  as  soon  as  possible.  I  must  beg 
you  once  more  to  send  some  hymns  of  your  own.  Don't 
fear  for  the  book ;  your  name  is  already  in  it,  so  that  ob- 
jection must  fall.  The  world  is  wiser  than  its  priests  are 
apt  to  be,  and  will  take  a  good  hymn  from  any  good  heart. 
Reform  hymns  will  be  a  godsend. 

The  hymn-book  was  the  Book  of  Hymns  which  we 
had  been  engaged  in  compiling  during  the  last  six 
months  in  the  leisure  of  Divinity  School  work.  Our 
friend  Frank  Appleton,  with  whom  we  had  at  first 
been  classmates  in  the  school,  had  been  settled  over 
a  church  in  Danvers,  which  used  a  very  antiquated 
and  to  him  unsatisfactory  hymn-book.  So  we  told 
him  one  day  that  we  would  make  a  new  one  for  his 
use.  Thus  what  might  have  seemed  an  audacity  in 
two  "unfledged  "  ministers  came  about  very  simply. 
The  book  was,  however,  first  used  by  Edward  Hale 
in  the  church  at  Worcester,  over  which  he  had  re- 
cently been  ordained.  It  was  afterwards  introduced 
by  Mr.  Parker  in  the  Music  Hall ;  he  was  wont  to 
call  it  the  "  Book  of  Sams."  He  liked  that  it  recog- 
nized more  than  was  then  usual  in  the  Unitarian 
hymn-books  the  idea  that  there  is  a  Holy  Spirit ; 
and  that  God  is  really  present  with  and  in  the  soul 
of  man,  a  doctrine  which  Unitarianism  then  looked 
upon  as  somewhat  fanatical.     It  contained  also  some 


MEMOIR. 


31 


anti-slavery  hymns,  by  Higginson,  Lowell,  and  Whit- 
tier.  Its  Christology  was  not  unorthodox,  though 
*4iumanitarian."  There  was.  a  large  number  of 
hymns  relating  to  Jesus,  with  the  customary  appel- 
lations of  Lord,  Saviour,  and  Redeemer,  and  his  mir- 
acles were  emphasized.  I  am  not  sure  but  this  part 
was  rather  less  the  work  of  Johnson  than  of  his  col- 
laborator, of  whom  he  was  generally  a  little  in  ad- 
vance in  his  theology. 

TO    HIS    MOTHER. 

June,  1846. 

I  send  you  some  hymns  this  week,  which  I  think  you 

will  like.     If  you  think  they  would  help  the  poor  K 

girls,  now  that  the  first  shock  of  their  bereavement  is  over, 
perhaps  you  may  like  to  send  some  of  them,  from  me. 
You  will  find  one  of  mine — No.  313.  [This  was  "On- 
ward, Christian,"  from  which  the  latter  word  was  after- 
wards omitted,  as  being  too  narrow.] 

Very  soon  I  shall  come  home  "  for  good  and  all."  Only 
a  month  more  of  this  school :  then  I  shall  be  yours  till 
*'  settlement,"  dwelling  at  home  1 

I  saw  in  a  Salem  paper  that  fiimsy  statement  about  S.'s 
preaching.  The  fact  was  S.  prayed  for  "  our  country  in 
this  hour  of  her  shame,  that  God  would  not  permit  her  to 
carry  sword  and  shackle  into  a  sister  land."     Whereat  a 

Mr.  H suddenly  left  the  church.  .  .  .  Tell  father  to 

look  in  the  Courier  of  Wednesday,  and  read  one  of  the 
finest  poems  that  ever  was  written.  I  think  it  is  by  James 
R.  Lowell.     It  is  about  the  war. 

The  war  was  the  Mexican  War  then  raging.  It 
grew  out  of  the  annexation  of  Texas  in  the  interests 
of  the  extension  of  slavery.  And  the  poem  was 
the  first  of  the  afterwards  famous  Biglow  Papers, 
Johnson,  himself,  wrote  at  this  time  the  verses  — 


32  MEMOIR. 

"  Lord,  once  our  faith  in  man  no  fear  could  move ; 
Now  save  it  from  despair !  " 

printed  as  No.  420  in  the  Booh  of  Eymns,  To  the 
theological  questions  then  coming  up,  a  new  test  of 
fidelity  and  new  opportunity  for  sacrifices  in  behalf 
of  freedom  was  beginning  to  be  added  in  the  way  of 
the  young  preachers.  Johnson  was  not  found  want- 
ing, as  we  shall  see. 

He  graduated  from  the  school  in  July,  1846.  His 
theme  at  the  "  Visitation,"  as  it  was  then  called,  was 
of  his  own  choosing,  "  wresting,"  he  wrote,  "  the  sub- 
ject given  me  by  the  Doctors  to  suit  myself."  It  was 
"The  Preacher's  Duty  in  our  Times;"  and  we  may 
be  sure  that  it  was  treated  with  earnestness,  frankness, 
and  independence.  He  also  wrote  for  the  occasion 
the  hymn,  "  God  of  the  earnest  heart."  Another  was 
by  O.  B.  Frothingham,  — 

"  Thou  Lord  of  hosts,  whose  guiding  hand 
Hast  brought  us  here,  before  thy  face," 

And  now  came  the  period  of  "  candidating." 
Johnson  preached  in  various  pulpits  around  Boston 
and  elsewhere  with  more  or  less  acceptance ;  more, 
generally,  with  the  younger  people  of  the  churches 
than  with  the  elders.  His  sermons  were  touchstones, 
or  Ithuriel  spears,  —  and  the  public  mind  was  sensi- 
tive. He  was  charged  with  being  a  "  Deist."  He 
was  even  charged,  when  he  chanced  to  take  a  text 
from  the  Apocrypha,  with  "  not  finding  the  Bible 
good  enough  for  him."  He  was  charged  with  "bring- 
ing politics  into  the  pulpit,"  an  accusation  at  that 
time  very  common  from  the  politics  in  the  pews^ 
which  was  set  against  any  preaching  of  national 
righteousness  in  the  pulpit.  He  was  charged  with 
"  going  about  breaking  up  the  churches,"  by  those 


MEMOIR.  33 

who  could  not  see  that  he  was  truly  an  angel  troub- 
ling the  waters. 

He  was  one  of  the  band  of  prophets  in  those  days 
who  might  have  said,  as  the  prophet  of  old  did  to 
the  Jewish  King  :  "  It  is  not  I  that  trouble  the  peo- 
ple, it  is  thou  that  troublest  the  people."  The  oppo- 
sition to  them  was  simply  a  part  of  that  moral  dis- 
ease, that  cancer,  whose  roots  were  spreading  through 
all  the  social,  political,  commercial,  and  ecclesiastical 
life  of  the  land,  and  against  which,  only  just  in  time 
for  our  salvation,  were  the  vital  powers  aroused. 

To  a  newly-formed  society  at  Harrison  Square 
Johnson  preached  for  considerably  more  than  a  year. 
Here  he  made  some  devoted  friends.  One  of  them 
writes  of  his  preaching  there  :  "  I  have  never  known 
one  superior,  and  few  equal,  to  Mr.  Johnson  in  the 
impression  he  made  of  moral  and  spiritual  elevation. 
Every  intellectual  perception,  even  the  clearness  and 
force  of  his  diction,  seemed  to  owe  its  vigorous  and 
persuasive  quality  to  a  baptism  in  the  fountain-head 
of  moral  rectitude.  The  moral  sentiment  to  him 
was  the  very  impress  of  God's  face  on  the  soul.  It 
was  the  Immanuel^  the  God  with  us  ;  and  when  he 
uttered  its  prophecies  or  warnings,  it  was  with  the 
look  and  accent  of  one  who  believed  that  he  had 
been  with  the  Most  High,  and  had  His  message  to 
report ;  which  he  did  with  the  simplicity,  the  verac- 
ity, and  sweet  audacity  of  a  child  uttering  his  Fa- 
ther's words.  All  was  the  outcome  of  a  soul  living 
in  the  region  of  moral  ideas." 

But  all  were  not  able  or  willing  to  hear  the  mes- 
sage. 


34  MEMOIR. 


TO    THE    CHURCH    COMMITTEE,    HARRISON    SQUARE. 

January,  1849. 

Gentlemen,  —  I  have  received  your  note  of  January  3, 
in  which  you  request  me  "  not  to  introduce  any  political 
subject  into  [my]  discourses  next  Sunday."  As  I  am  not 
informed  of  any  other  special  reason  for  this  request,  I  can 
only  regard  it  as  an  indication  of  a  wish  to  interfere  with 
the  freedom  of  the  pulpit.  I  am  accustomed  to  preach  upon 
such  subjects  as  I  deem  it  my  duty,  and  in  the  performance 
of  that  I  will  not  be  interfered  with.  It  rests  with  your- 
selves to  say  whether  you  will  place  in  your  pulpit  a  min- 
ister who  will  preach  as  he  thinks  right,  or  such  an  one  as 
will  preach  only  what  you  think  right.  In  the  one  case 
you  will  probably  have  a  man  who  is  in  earnest  in  the  ser- 
vice of  truth  ;  in  the  other  case  you  will  have  one  who  con- 
sents to  be  merely  your  echo.  I  think  you  must  have  be- 
come already  aware  that  I  cannot  suit  you  in  the  latter 
purpose. 

It  was  not  my  intention  to  preach  on  the  application  of 
Christianity  to  any  special  political  subject  [next  Sunday], 
but  I  reserve  the  right  to  do  so,  on  all  occasions. 

I  do  not  wish,  while  preaching  at  the  invitation  of  your 
committee,  to  interfere  with  your  express  request,  and  you 
will  therefore  not  be  surprised  that  I  request  you  to  make 
some  other  arrangement  for  the  supply  of  your  pulpit  next 
Sunday.  And  I  write  immediately  that  you  may  have  time 
to  do  so. 

In  1849  Johnson  was  called  to  know  the  grief  of 
his  mother's  death.  Those  who  were  with  him  in 
that  hushed  chamber  will  never  forget  the  fervor  and 
tenderness  of  the  prayer  which  flowed  from  his  lips. 
To  a  friend's  letter  of  sympathy  he  replies  :  — 

I  cannot  say  what  I  would  in  answer  to  your  words  of 
real  sympathy,  spoken,  too,  from  your  own  experience  of 


MEMOIR.  35 

suffering.  .  .  .  That  void  left  in  our  path  of  life  never  again 
to  be  tilled  here  —  we  cannot  yet  conceive  how  deep  it  is. 
May  we  be  made  truly  conscious  of  the  unseen  life,  that  this 
sorrow  may  be  indeed,  as  it  must  have  been  intended,  a 
message  of  good  to  us.  .  .  .  Had  you  known  my  mother 
longer  you  would  have  found  her  full  of  a  tender  inter- 
est in  everything  beautiful  and  pure,  and  of  sympathy  for 
every  humane  thought  and  purpose. 

TO    MISS    LUCY    OSGOOD. 

June  5,  1850. 

I  write  a  line  to  tell  you  that  there  will  be  no  services 

at  the  Plarrisou  Square  church  next  Sunday,  nor  probably 

Sunday  after.     Wliat  then  will  be  done,  it  is  impossible 

to  say.     At    present,  you  see    I  am    rusticating ;    church 

troubles  give  us  vacations  at  least,  to  say  nothing  of  other 

blessings. 

TO    MISS    LUCY    OSGOOD. 

July  IS,  1850. 
I  would  fain  hope  that  the  age  is  not  so  far  behindhand 
with  the  simplest  Christian  Truths  as  you  say,  in  speaking 
of  my  sermon.  People  are  beginning  to  feel  the  necessity 
of  taking  their  stand,  radically,  for  or  against  them.  And 
I  gather  from  my  own  experience  every  confidence  that 
the  work  of  purification  is  going  on  in  society  with  a  prog- 
ress never  before  dreamed  of.  Everywhere  I  find  men 
and  women  ready  for  the  work  God  calls  them  to  do;  and 
these  are  forcing  the  rest  to  a  just  knowledge  of  themselves, 
and  to  the  conviction  likewise  that  there  is  a  spirit  abroad 
which  can  neither  be  tamed  nor  conquered,  cajoled  nor  re- 
strained, full  of  the  perfect  assurance  of  faith  and  power. 
Did  you  see  the  report  of  Mr.  Choate's  speech  at  the  Story 
Association,  where  he  says-  "  the  conscience  has  too  long 
been  allowed  unbounded  authority  "(!!)?  Put  that  by  the 
side  of  Mr.  Webster's  confession  that  he  does  not  know 
where  a  "  higher  law  "  than  the  Constitution  is  to  be  found, 


36  MEMOIR. 

and  you  have  a  capital  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  the 
anti-slavery  movement  is  forcing  the  evil  spirit  of  politics 
in  this  nation  out  into  the  open  day,  in  all  its  ugliness. 
Shall  we  not  feel  sure  of  its  downfall  being  nigh  ? 

TO    HIS    SISTER   A. 

October,  1850. 

I  find  I  have  come  away  without  a  sermon  suitable  for 
preaching  to  the  Neponset  Christian  Baptists,  next  Sunday 
p.  M.  Now  I  want  you  to  pick  out  of  the  undecipherable 
heap  under  the  book-case,  the  two  sermons  marked  "  Blind 
Guides  "  and  "  Giving  the  best  to  God."  Send  them  to 
me  by  express. 

Jenny  Lind  is  beyond  description.  She  has  not  exactly 
handsome  features,  but  an  expression  full  of  deep  senti- 
ment, of  sweetness,  and  of  calm  thoughtfulness.  I  can 
think  of  no  other  word  than  soulful ;  sentimental  as  that 
sounds,  it  is  the  true  word.  There  is  a  wonderfully  quiet 
self-possession  in  all  her  movements  which  not  the  stormiest 
applause  could  disturb  for  a  moment.  Not  the  least  sign  of 
gratified  vanity  or  sense  of  obligation  to  the  audience.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  she  had  the  feeling  that  the  voice  and 
melody  were  not  her  own.  When  she  came  on  the  stage, 
it  was  in  the  quietest  way,  and  as  she  stood  with  her  head 
bent  a  little  toward  her  notes,  it  seemed  as  though  she  was 
gathering  all  her  heart  and  mind  to  meet  the  deep  senti- 
ment of  the  piece.  It  was  only  then  that  there  seemed 
any  misgiving  in  her  ;  but  it  was  reverence  and  not  a  fear 
of  the  public.  The  words  began,  — "I  know  that  my 
Redeemer  liveth."  I  cannot  describe  the  effect.  When, 
at  the  close,  her  voice,  —  from  the  words  "  risen  from  the 
dead  "  to  "  the  first  fruits  of  them  that  sleep,"  —  sank  into 
a  deep,  low,  pure  tone,  which  moved  through  the  stillness 
for  what  seemed  a  very  long  time,  and  then  calmly  soared 
out  of  the  depths  a  little  and  passed  away  into  the  stillness, 
the  effect  was  wonderful.     There  was  a  moment's  pause  of 


MEMOIR.  37 

awe  ;  then  there  burst  forth  such  a  storm  from  all  the  mul- 
titude :  it  was  as  if  the  thought  she  had  expressed  silenced 
them  for  a  moment,  and  then  the  womanly  sweetness  and 
holiness  which  had  given  the  tones  their  power  suddenly 
flashed  upon  them.  I  never  before  heard  applause  given 
to  sacred  music  which  did  not  shock  me.  It  certainly  did 
not  then. 

The  common  talk  about  her  innocent  childlikeness  does 
not  do  her  justice.    She  is  not  childlike,  but  maidenly. 

TO    S.  L.  IN  PARIS. 

December  18,  1851. 

And  you  have  seen  Versailles,  and  the  Madeleine,  and 
Notre  Dame,  and  the  hook-stalls :  above  all  St.  Germain 
I'Auxerrois,  the  church  of  mysterious  depths  and  mazes, 
among  whose  silent  cloisters  I  have  wandered  under  the 
solemn  light  falling  from  transfigured  saints  aiid  in  the 
shadows  of  multitudinous  arches  and  pillars  — a  true  shrine 
of  holiness  and  peace  amid  the  surface-tumults  of  French 
life.  And  have  you  seen  Rembrandt's  picture  of  the  Good 
Samaritan,  in  the  Louvre  ?  Oppressed  by  Rubens'  job-work 
and  the  stuff  of  French  painters,  I  got  much  refreshment 
from  that  sweet  and  wonderful  painting.  Would  it  strike 
me  now,  I  wonder,  as  it  did  then  ? 

But  let  me  talk  about  your  Highland  tour  in  England. 
The  rain  was  certainly  a  damper.  But  for  me  De  Quin- 
cey's  book  on  the  Lake  Poets  would  have  been  a  worse 
one.  If  his  gossip  be  true,  Wordsworth  must  have  been  a 
very  conceited  person.  I  have  often  thought  I  detected  an 
unbounded  complacency  under  the  simplicity  of  his  manner 
which  once  so  enchanted  me.  I  once  had  a  sort  of  devo- 
tional feeling  towards  Wordsworth's  poetry.  But  for  the 
life  of  me  I  can't  get  any  of  it  back  again.  [He  did  re- 
cover it  later.]  De  Quincey  is  an  opium-eater,  however ; 
and  what  is  significant,  he  is  scarcely  mentioned  in 
Wordsworth's    Memoirs,    just   published.       About    Cole- 


38  MEMOIR. 

ridge,  I  am  disposed  to  think  De  Quincey  tells  the 
facts  as  they  are.  But  never  have  I  found  a  writer  who 
impressed  me  so  profoundly  with  the  authority  and  gran- 
deur of  truth  itself,  as  truth,  —  with  a  religious  awe  to- 
wards it,  —  as  Coleridge  in  his  ethical  writings.  Here, 
again,  is  the  strange  fact  of  the  two  lives  between  which 
men  of  genius  hover,  —  possessed  by  the  Spirit  for  a  little 
while  at  a  time,  not  possessing  It  steadfastly  and  organ- 
ically. But  with  all  his  keen  critical  dissecting  De  Quin- 
cey cannot  throw  a  shade  over  the  loveliness  of  Charles 
Lamb's  self-denial,  nor  over  the  scrupulous  uprightness  of 
Southey's  nature. 

Speaking  of  poetry,  the  "  Golden  Legend  "  pleases  me 
exceedingly  in  parts.  The  working  up  of  the  plan  don't 
quite  suit  my  taste ;  but  the  idea  is  very  beautiful,  and  dis- 
tinct passages  are  certainly  among  the  finest  in  English 
poetry.  Perhaps  it  will  interest  you  to  know  that  J.  J.  G. 
Wilkinson  has  published  a  new  work  on  the  Human  Body, 
attempting  to  present  it  as  the  expression  of  a  Divine  Form, 
and  to  deduce  from  this  ideal  basis  of  the  organization  a 
theory  of  health  and  conduct  which  shall  be  absolute.  It 
is  full  of  strikincr  new  thoughts  and  of  old  thoughts  strik- 
ingly  presented.  The  conception  is  admirable,  and  a  step 
in  the  right  direction  exactly ;  but  there  is  much  that  is 
vague,  misty,  and  declamatory.  AVhat  vitiates  it,  however, 
is  a  want  of  a  broad  humanity  —  a  cold  intellectualism,  the 
besetting  sin,  indeed,  of  the  Swedenborgians.  They  are 
complacent.  Is  it  not  because  of  the  keen  satisfaction 
there  is  in  seeing  through  forms,  in  symbolizing,  that  they 
are  so  ?  They  leave  all  practical,  hard  moral  effort  for 
this  aesthetic  enjoyment.  Goethe  liked  to  speak  of  his 
acts  as  symbolic  ;  and  for  that  reason,  perhaps,  he  cared 
little  to  make  them  moral  or  humane. 

Theology  I  am  diverging  from,  more  and  more  every 
day.  I  am  convinced  that  my  mission  is  to  go  about  scat- 
tering the  seeds  of  moral  growth,  —  religious,  too,  I  hope, 


MEMOIR.  39 

but  in  application  to  the  moral  movements  especially.  I 
do  not  desire  to  sustain  the  churches,  —  false  aggregations 
as  they  are  for  selfish  and  temporary  purposes.  I  am  con- 
tent to  use  them,  for  the  time,  as  convenient  openings  for 
that  sort  of  truth  which,  while  it  destroys  them,  will  build 
up  something  better.    Here,  on  one  side  of  me,  is  our  friend 

S ,  expelled,  with  his  great  family,  from  his  society,  for 

conscience'  sake ;  and   on    the    other, ,  settled  under 

bonds  (willingly  given)  not  to  preach  about  Slavery.  So 
it  is  everywhere  in  this  day  of  trial  and  purgation  for  the 
churches.  Everything  in  this  crisis  of  American  growth 
centres  in  the  great  conflict  about  this  gigantic  sin  of 
Slavery.  That  is  the  battle-field  on  which  the  questions 
are  all  to  be  fought  out.  Of  moral  and  spiritual  and  in- 
tellectual Freedom  against  the  Absolutism  of  sect  and 
party ;  of  Love  against  Mammon  ;  of  Conscience  against 
the  State  ;  of  Man  against  Majorities  ;  of  Truth  against 
Policy  ;  of  God  against  the  Devil.  It  is  really  astonishing 
to  see  how  everything  that  happens  with  us  works  di- 
rectly into  this  fermenting  conflict. 

The  land  is  reeling  at  this  moment  with  enthusiasm  for 
that  magnificent  character,  Kossuth.  He  is  a  splendid  em- 
bodiment of  sujffering  and  victory  for  the  sake  of  Freedom. 
His  command  of  our  language  is  amazing,  and  his  eloquence 
throws  our  orators  (at  any  rate  the  political  orators)  into 
the  blackest  shade. 


VI. 

In  1853  Johnson,  after  having  preached  to  a  new 
society  in  Lynn  from  Sunday  to  Sunday  for  more 
than  a  j^ear,  was  invited  to  take  permanent  charge 
of  it.  It  had  first  been  gathered  as  a  Unitarian 
Society.  But  with  that  denomination  he  had  never 
identified  himself ;   and,  indeed,  he  was  unwilling 


40  MEMOIR. 

to  take  any  sectarian  name  or  connection.  At  his 
urgency,  the  original  organization  was  given  up, 
and  the  independent  '^  Free  Church  "  established  in 
its  place.  "  I  mean  to  have  that,"  he  said,  "  or  noth- 
ing." Nor  was  he  willing  to  pass  through  any  of  the 
usual  forms  of  "  ordination."  The  inward  call  to 
preach,  and  the  outward  call  of  those  who  wished  to 
hear,  were  to  him  sufficient  seal  of  the  ministry  of  re- 
ligion to  which  he  had  devoted  himself.  Nor  did  he 
ever  "  administer  the  sacraments."  The  religion  that 
he  preached  was  natural  religion^  as  opposed  alike  to 
all  ecclesiastical,  special,  and  supernatural  claims.  It 
was  simply  another  name  for  truth,  freedom,  piety, 
righteousness,  love,  as  it  might  be  given  to  him  to 
see  their  various  aspects  and  their  applications  to 
present  needs.  He  preached  but  once  on  each  Sun- 
day. Partly  on  that  account  he  made  his  sermons 
longer  than  is  usual ;  but  more  because  of  a  certain 
mental  necessity  which  he  always  felt,  to  present  with 
complete  fullness  whatever  subject  he  took  in  hand. 
He  had  not  the  gift  to  touch  only  upon  salient  points, 
or  to  present  a  single  aspect  of  a  subject,  or  to  put 
things  in  a  way  to  catch  the  popular  ear.  This  he 
knew  very  well ;  but  he  was  true  to  his  own  powers, 
and  if  he  taxed  the  attention  of  his  hearers,  he  also 
trained  it. 

The  length  of  his  discourse  was  never  a  surface 
measure,  nor  was  it  any  dilution  of  thought  or  diffuse- 
ness  of  words.  The  depth  was  equal  to  the  fullness. 
There  was  never  any  mere  rhetoric ;  always  the  note 
of  entire  sincerity,  revealed  in  the  very  earnestness 
of  his  tones.  These  qualities  marked  his  prayers  like- 
wise ;  they  were  the  outpourings  of  a  spirit  rever- 
ently conscious  of  a  Divine  Presence,  and  commun- 


MEMOIK.  41 

ing  directly  with  the  Infinite  Life  and  Light.  They 
were  never  ''  offered  through  "  any  intercessor,  or  in 
any  other  name  than  that  of  God  and  the  human 
soul.  They  were  the  words  of  a  child  seeking  his 
father;  of  human  needs  trusting  the  immediateness 
of  the  Divine  supply. 

During  all  his  ministry  in  Lynn,  —  which  lasted 
through  seventeen  years,  with  one  interval  of  a  year, 
—  he  continued  to  live  at  his  Salem  home  ;  going  over 
the  five  or  six  miles  to  his  Sunday  preaching,  and  at 
times  during  the  week  to  visit  the  families  of  his 
charge.  '^I  could  not  preach  to  my  people,"  he  said, 
"  if  I  did  not  know  them  in  their  homes."  One  of  his 
parishioners  has  told  us  what  "  a  source  of  comfort 
and  keen  delight  "  his  visits  were,  "  always  anticipated 
with  so  much  pleasure."  His  Sundays  were  spent  with 
the  family  of  his  friend  James  N.  Buffum.  *'  Lynn 
at  this  time"  says  one  of  his  hearers,  "contained 
less  than  twenty  thousand  people,  and  was  noted  for 
its  general  intelligence.  A  broadly  democratic  spirit 
prevailed,  lacking  somewhat  in  culture  and  rever- 
ence, but  not  inhospitable  to  the  new  movements  of 
reform  which  came  to  disturb  established  ideas." 

Besides  his  regular  pulpit  work,  —  and  his  ser- 
mons were  always  carefully  written  out,  —  Johnson 
readily  responded  to  other  calls  upon  his  thought 
and  pen.  Becoming  early,  and  remaining  to  the  end, 
deeply  interested  in  the  anti-slavery  movement,  he 
never  joined  any  of  the  associations  for  its  further- 
ance ;  but  he  frequently  lectured  in  their  service  in 
different  places.  He  always  distrusted  his  power  to 
interest  general  audiences,  and  never  trusted  himself 
to  speak  in  public  without  a  manuscript.  He  threw 
his  weight  in  the  same  way  in  the  temperance  move- 


42  MEMOIR. 

ment,  and  in  that  for  woman's  enlarged  freedom. 
When  the  Free  Religious  Association  was  formed, 
still  abstaining  from  becoming  a  member  of  the  or- 
ganization, he  willingly  addressed  its  meetings  when 
called  to  do  so  ;  and  gave  two  or  three  lectures  in  the 
Horticultural  Hall  courses.  In  all  these  various  lines 
he  maintained  the  entirely  individual  and  independ- 
ent position  to  which  his  nature  impelled  him  ;  always 
fearful  of  the  tendency  of  organizations  to  hamper 
individual  liberty.  At  any  rate  they  were  not  for 
him,  whatever  benefits  others  might  find  in  them. 
When  The  Radical  magazine  was  established,  he 
contributed  an  article  to  its  first  number  ;  and  in 
successive  volumes  published  papers  among  the  most 
thoughtful  and  weight}^ ;  notably  a  series  upon  the 
Foundations  of  Belief,  in  which  he  discussed  the  ques- 
tion of  authority  and  freedom  with  great  ability. 
I  remember  Mr.  Alartineau's  telling  me  that  he  al- 
ways read  with  great  interest  Johnson's  papers  in 
The  Radical. 

I  do  not  know  just  when  the  studies  in  the  Orien- 
tal religions  began.  But  in  1858  he  came  to  Brook- 
lyn to  give  the  course  of  six  lectures  which  he  had 
prepared,  and  had  delivered  in  several  places.  I  re- 
member the  wonder  and  charm  of  these  lectures  of 
his  on  a  subject  then  so  very  novel,  and  in  which  he 
was  a  pioneer ;  and  the  delight  which  his  recital  of 
the  poem  beginning 

"  The  snow-flake  that  glistens  at  mom  on  Kailasa," 
which  he  had  found  in  some  missionar}^  volume,  gave. 
These  lectures  were   the  germ   afterward  developed 
in  his  great  work.  Oriental  Religions.,  the  studies  for 
which  occupied  all  the  coming  years. 

Besides  these  special  studies,  Johnson  always  found 


MEMOIR.  43 

time  for  a  large  general  reading  —  and  I  need  not 
say  a  most  intelligent  one  —  of  the  important  new 
books  that  appeared  from  time  to  time  in  literature, 
science,  or  theology. 

He  was  very  fond  of  music ;  and  often  availed  him- 
self of  the  opportunities  which  Boston  offers  of  hear- 
ing the  symphonies  and  oratorios  of  the  great  mas- 
ters.    A  portrait  of  Beethoven  hung  upon  his  wall. 

During  all  these  years  of  scholarly  work  added 
to  the  faithful  labors  of  sermon  writing,  he  was  ac- 
customed to  rest  and  refresh  himself  during  the  sum- 
mer by  vacation  visits  or  journeys  in  the  country. 
The  old  family  homestead  in  North  Andover,  and 
Lary's  in  Gorham,  N.  H.,  and  Willoughby  Lake,  were 
favorite  resting-places,  where  he  enjoyed  himself  with 
his  kindred  and  friends.  He  often  went  upon  long 
foot  journeys,  alone  or  with  a  companion :  in  the 
Berkshire  hills;  in  Nova  Scotia;  in  the  Pennsylvania 
mountain  and  coal  region ;  in  the  Green  Mountains, 
or  the  White  Mountains,  or  the  Katskills.  The 
mountains  were  to  him  a  passion.  He  always  took 
with  him  his  geological  hammer,  for  to  his  poetic 
love  of  nature  he  added  a  scientific  interest,  and  his 
cabinet  of  minerals  was,  I  believe,  an  excellent  one. 
Of  farmers,  stage-drivers,  miners,  this  scholar  readily 
made  companions,  and  delighted  them  with  his  genial 
friendliness  and  animated  talk  as  much  as  he  did 
more  educated  associates. 

Over  the  young  people  within  his  circle  in  these 
years  the  influence  of  a  spirit  so  elevated,  so  earnest, 
so  serious  and  yet  so  genial,  of  a  mind  so  active  and 
so  well  stored,  was  very  strong.  His  friend  Garrison 
has  given  us  in  the  "  Memorial "  some  hints  of  his 
power  over  young  men :    "  Suggestions  for  reading 


44  MEMOIR. 

or  study,  the  freedom  of  his  extensive  library,  the 
guidance  of  his  cultivated  taste,  were  offered  freely. 
In  his  presence  ignoble  thoughts  were  impossible, 
and  conversation  held  a  fitting  level.  To  be  with  him 
was  to  increase  one's  self-respect  aud  resolution. 
Great  things  seemed  easily  possible  under  the  stim- 
ulating influence  of  his  abounding  faith  and  spirit- 
ual insight."  Nor  was  his  influence  less  fine  upon 
the  young  women  of  his  acquaintance.  To  one  of 
them  I  am  indebted  for  this  account  of  "  a  delight- 
ful fortnight  passed  in  the  summer  of  1849  with 
Johnson  and  his  sister  at  the  old  farm-house  in  Xorth 
Andover; "  — 

It  was  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  life  for  some  of  the 
young  girls  who  were  there.  Looking  over  an  old  journal 
of  that  year,  I  find  :  "  How  different  is  Samuel  Johnson 
from  any  other  young  man  I  have  ever  met ;  his  whole  being 
bears  the  stamp  of  purity,  nobleness,  and  high  resolve. 
As  he  reads  to  us  in  Fichte's  '  Destination  of  Man '  and 
*  Way  of  the  Blessed  Life,'  how  rich  in  possibihties  life  be- 
comes. Not  of  mere  happiness,  for  he  makes  the  renuncia- 
tion with  which  "  the  spirits  bent  their  awful  brows  and 
said,  — '  Content,'  "  in  the  '  Vision  of  Poets  '  seem  a  better 
thing  than  any  more  earthly  good.  And  yet  how  gay  and 
bright  he  is  !  "With  infinite  trouble  he  catches  *  old  Peg,' 
who  is  usually  allowed  to  roam  at  her  own  sweet  will,  and 
we  flourish  off  on  a  day's  picnic  to  the  beautiful  Ledge,  or 
Den  Rock,  or  Pomp's  Pond.  As  we  pile  ourselves  and  our 
baskets  into  the  wagon,  how  he  jokes  and  makes  merry, 
and  cheers  up  Peg  by  assuring  her  that  she  is  'only  his 
own  age,  twenty-six.'  And  then  he  praises  our  table  adorn- 
ments and  the  oak  garlands  we  twine  for  our  own  hats 
and  his.  ... 

"  And  how  these  places  will  be  forever  associated  with 
his  reading!     One  feels  as  if  poetry  had  been  only  half 


MEMOIR.  45 

poetry  until  now,  read  in  his  rich  voice  with  such  depth  of 
feeling.  We  have  had  Chaucer,  the  Percy  Ballads,  Mackay 
(whose  'Golden  City  '  is  a  great  favorite  of  his)  ;  both  the 
Brownings ;  and  in  prose,  beside  Fichte,  Raskin's  '  Seven 
Lamps,'  and  much  of  Milton.  He  kindly  interests  himself 
in  our  German,  and  offers  his  books  on  our  return  to  Sa- 
lem. How  good  of  him  thus  to  entertain  us  girls  who  can 
give  him  nothing  in  return !  And,  best  of  all,  he  never 
sentimentalizes.  If  one  could  be  foolish  enough  to  do  so 
about  him,  one  could  imagine  him  as  uttering  the  rebuke 
of  Protesilaus  in  Wordsworth's  '  Laodamia,'  — 

"  *  Learn  by  a  mortal  yearning  to  ascend 
Seeking  a  higher  object.' 

We  all  dread  to  say  good-by  to  dear  old  Andover ;  but  he 
consoles  us  by  applying  Keats's  '  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy 
forever'  to  our  good  time  here,  and  planning  for  many 
more  such  visits,  '  until  we  shall  be  seventy,'  he  says." 

But  I  will  not  attempt  further  to  summarize  or  to 
characterize  Johnson's  life  and  work  in  these  seven- 
teen years  in  Lynn.  Its  varied  sides  will  be  best 
shown  in  his  correspondence.  And  I  am  very  glad 
to  let  him  speak  for  himself. 

May  30,  1853. 

Lynn  is  doing  hopefully.  They  tell  me  the  whole  sum 
requisite  has  been  pledged,  and  the  Free  Church  will  be  a 
fact.  I  held  forth  yesterday  upon  the  principles  thereof ; 
and  the  old  society  being  disbanded,  after  service,  the  new 
one  was  formed,  and  goes  into  operation  on  my  return  in  a 
few  weeks.  It  is  quite  an  experiment,  nor  do  I  feel  very 
sanguine  about  my  popular  gifts,  it  must  be  confessed. 
Still  I  shall  enter  into  the  matter  with  some  zeal,  and 
surely  the  field  is  rich  enough,  if  I  have  but  the  power 
to  fill  it.  My  announcement  that  women  as  well  as  men 
should  be  admitted  to  our  pulpit  caused  a  little  flurry  with 
a  few.     But  they  will  soon  get  that  over. 

I  spent  Wednesday  afternoon  and  Saturday  [of  Anni- 


46  MEMOIR. 

versary  "Week]  in  Boston ;  and  even  in  that  short  time  was 
satiated  and  cloyed  and  deafened  and  confounded  by  talk  ; 
and  then  went  home  and  slept  it  off  as  I  could. 

Do  you  attend  the  Hartford  Convention  to  discuss  the 
"  origin  and  authority  of  the  Bible  "  ?  Henry  C.  Wright, 
Jos.  Barker,  and  the  rest  are  to  have  an  infinite  talk  on 
that  matter.  I  fear  there  will  be  more  noise  than  scholar- 
ship about  it.  Could  we  have  a  series  of  carefully  pre- 
pared essays  on  the  subject  by  liberal  thinkers  and  thor- 
ough scholars  —  that  were  something  to  be  desired. 

TO    MISS    LUCY    OSGOOD. 

September,  1853. 
Our  services  are  held  at  Sagamore  Hall.  I  shall  be  de- 
lighted to  see  the  old  friends  whose  familiar  faces  have 
greeted  me  in  so  many  of  the  stations,  or  halting  places,  or 
oases,  or  whatever  we  may  call  them,  of  my  sufficiently  er- 
ratic and  unsettled  pulpit  life.  This  time  I  can  invite  you 
to  a  church  where  people  do  not  pay  so  much  a  seat ;  but 
simply  as  much,  or  as  little,  as  they  please,  that  everybody 
may  have  the  benefits  of  the  services,  whatever  those  bene- 
fits way  be.  Of  course,  having  just  started  on  this  track, 
we  cannot  yet  predict  success.  But  the  position  I  have  al- 
ways held  to  be  the  really  just  and  becoming  one  for  a 
Christian  church.  And  on  stating  that  I  could  not  continue 
with  the  society  here  any  longer,  except  on  the  condition 
of  their  abandoning  the  pews  and  forming  a  free  church,  I 
found  most  of  them  willing  to  make  the  trial.  We  have  no 
permanent  organization,  and  are  simply  united  for  a  season 
to  open  to  the  public,  freely,  the  best  truth  we  can  arrive 
at,  depending  entirely  on  the  voluntary  contributions  of 
those  who  shall  make  a  regular  practice  of  coming  for  such 
means  as  will  enable  us  to  go  on.  I  am  not  even  a  settled 
minister  (though  I  hear  you  feared  my  falling  away  from 
my  first  faith)  in  any  sense  which  implies  the  inability  to 
leave  at  any  moment.  I  simply  fill  the  desk  of  a  free 
church,  and  make  as  good  a  friend  as  I  can  to  the  people 


MEMOIR.  47 

who  come  to  me.  So  much  about  myself.  Though  I 
should  like  to  talk  with  you  about  free  churches,  from 
which  I  hope  great  things. 

TO   s.   L. 

January,  1S54. 

As  for  Lynn,  we  go  on  as  well  as  could  be  desired,  ex- 
cept in  the  item  of  funds.  But  there  is  no  lack  of  hearers 
and  attentive  ones.  My  little  hall  is  crowded  every  Sun- 
day night.  I  have  been  putting  the  Oriental  Lectures  into 
a  more  sermonic  form,  to  awake,  if  possible,  some  desire 
for  a  broader  culture  in  the  people.  They  are  mostly  im- 
mersed in  business,  and  there  are  positively  no  literary  ad- 
vantages. 

November,  1854. 

I  am  now  engaged  every  Monday  evening,  in  lecturing 
at  Watertown ;  my  seven  plagues  of  Egypt,  or  golden  can- 
dlesticks, or  whatever  else,  —  the  Eastern  Lectures. 

March,  1854. 

My  plans  for  the  summer  are  not  yet  matured,  but  I 
find  them  gravitating  to  the  Katskills  as  by  instinct.  I 
think  we  must  go  there  again.     Else  why  the  Mandingo  ? 

The  Nebraska  question  seems  to  have  stirred  us  up.  I 
should  hope  the  reaction  might  come  to  something,  if  the 
bill  passes.  If  it  fails,  the  North  will  claim  the  victory  and 
generously  grant  a  compromise  and  a  suspension  of  agita- 
tion. At  least  I  fear  so.  We  can't  afford  to  be  mollified 
just  now.  But  what  a  Nemesis  is  Slavery,  that  it  should 
be  putting  away  with  its  own  hands  the  foundations  of  its 
own  strength,  and  destroying  that  "  sacredness  of  compro- 
mises "  which  has  stood  in  the  way  of  moral  insight  and 
practical  fidelity  ever  since  the  Constitution  was  made. 

[In  April,  1853,  was  passed  in  Congress,  after  four 
months'  debate,  and  against  strong  opposition,  the  Bill  for 
organizing  Nebraska  Territory,  repealing  the  "  Missouri 
Compromise  "  of  1820,  which  had  forbidden  slavery  north 


48  MEMOIR. 

of  36'^  30'  of  latitude.  Charles  Sumner  called  it  "at  once 
the  worst  and  the  best  bill  on  which  Congress  ever  acted  : 
the  worst,  inasmuch  as  it  is  a  present  victory  for  slavery ; 
the  best,  for  it  prepares  the  way  for  that '  all  hail  hereafter,' 
when  slavery  must  disappear."  In  the  following  June  a 
fugitive  slave  was  seized  in  Boston  and  sent  back  into 
slavery,  amid  an  intense  popular  excitement.] 

TO    MISS    LUCY   OSGOOD. 

June  7,  1854. 

Dear  Friend,  —  I  believe  I  am  bound  to  let  you  know 
that,  in  consequence  of  this  atrocious  business  in  Boston, 
Parker  is  unable  to  exchange  with  me  next  Sunday,  accord- 
ing to  agreement.  He  will  preach  at  home,  I  presume,  for 
some  Sundays  to  come. 

How  impossible  to  conceive  what  issues  will  come  of 
things,  in  which  such  heart-sickening  tragedies  as  these  are 
enacted  !  At  present,  things  look  dark  enough,  and  even 
threaten  the  alternative  of  slavery  in  New  England  or  a 
civil  war.  Yet  this  shock  was  certainly  what  we  needed, 
and  there  may  come  a  saving  revolution  in  public  sentiment 
at  once.  Of  one  thing  I  should  think  our  best  people  must 
have  become  convinced  at  last,  that  there  can  be  no  union 
between  slavery  and  freedom,  and  that  dissolution  of  a  so- 
called  "  Union,"  which  bears  such  fruits  as  these,  is  the 
pressing  necessity  of  the  time.  What  a  moment  for  find- 
ing a  "  North  "  united,  earnest,  and  free. 

TO   R.    H.    MANNING. 

July,  1854 

Tell  Mrs.  M that  I  was  utterly  unable,  in  the  terri- 
ble excitement  of  that  Friday  in  Boston,  to  get  away  from 
Court  Square  until  so  late,  that  the  hour  and  my  own  ex- 
hausted condition  made  it  impossible  to  call  on  her.  ...  I 
send  you  a  sermon  about  that  "  Bad  Friday."  Our  faith 
in  the  old  Bay  State  is  receiving  the  severest  shock  it  ever 
felt.    I  do  not  know  what  is  to  come  of  the  miserable  party- 


{ 


MEMOIR.  49 

spirit  and  indifference  which  are  thwarting  every  effort  to 
unite  the  people  here  to  defend  State  rights  and  liberties. 
We  can  only  hope  for  the  best ;  knowing  that  the  end  must 
be  good,  whatever  comes  between. 

TO    THEODORE    PARKER. 

September  20,  1854. 
Understand  me :  my  object  is  not  to  preach  for  you,  but 
to  have  you  preach  for  me.  .  .  .  For  the  sake  of  having 
you  at  Lynn  I  had  even  made  up  my  mind  to  inflict  myself 
on  the  Music  Hall-ers  ;  now,  that  consideration  being  gone, 
I  infinitely  prefer  that  somebody  else  should  fill  your  place. 

TO  s.  L. 

January,  1855. 

As  to  the  Lectures  [on  Oriental  Religions]  can  you  get 
enough  tickets  taken  to  save  them  from  becoming  a  kind  of 
private  or  parlor  readings,  a  thing  whereof  my  native  mod- 
esty has  an  invincible  horror  ?  Do  you  know  anything  about 
the  Lectures  ?  Have  you  heard  the  testimony  of  any  com- 
petent person  who  has  listened  to  them?  I  don't  ask  in 
order  to  make  up  my  own  mind  about  them  of  course,  but 
in  order  that  you  and  your  friends  may  not  be  deceived, 
getting  something  very  different  from  what  you  expected. 

[A  pedestrian  tour  was  made  through  the  Berkshire  hills 
in  August.] 

I  walked  about  three  hundred  miles,  and  found,  espe- 
cially in  the  southwest  corner  of  Massachusetts,  some  of  the 
finest  scenery  I  ever  saw.  Hitchcock's  Geological  Report 
had  prepared  me  for  something  wonderful,  but  the  Bash 
Bish  gorge  and  the  Taghkanic  Mountain,  or  "  Dome," 
were  beyond  all  expectation. 

Have  you  read  Kingsley's  little  sea-shore  book  ?  [  Glau- 
cus.']  How  charming  it  is  ;  worth  fifty  barbarian  extrava- 
gances like  Amyas  Leighy  I  think. 

I  am  rather  interested  just  now  in  the  controversy  going 
on  in  Germany  between  Baur,  Hilgenfeld,  and  Hase.  The 
4 


50  MEMOIR. 

Tiibingen  School  are  getting  a  new  chance  to  explain  them- 
selves. 

October  18,  1855. 
I  have  delayed  writing  for  two  reasons :  first,  sickness 
for  two  or  three  weeks  past,  in  fact  almost  ever  since  I  got 
back  from  my  journey  in  August ;  and,  second,  because  I 
was  hoping  something  would  turn  up  to  enable  me  to  go 
with  you  to  Niagara  in  October.  But  a  fatality  seems  to 
forbid. 

MONTPELIER,  Vt.,  Julv,  1856. 

I  have  only  the  smallest  possible  India-rubber-cloth  bag 
strapped  over  my  shoulder,  a  folded  umbrella  in  it.  I  am 
doing  gloriously  in  the  grandest  scenery,  with  some  rough 
work,  to  be  sure,  but  going  at  the  rate  of  some  eighteen  to 
twenty-four  miles  a  day ;  —  not  hurrying,  but  sauntering 
along,  stopping  under  trees  and  at  farm-houses,  taking  sun 
and  shower  as  they  come,  and  finding  all  things  good,  only 
wishing  you  were  with  me.  If  you  could  be  at  Caldwell 
on  Saturday,  and  go  back  with  me,  and  so  to  Willoughby,  I 
should  indeed  rejoice. 

May  7, 1857. 

How  have  I  failed  of  writing  ?  Simply  because  I  have 
been  miserably  unwell  this  whole  spring,  have  written  to 
nobody,  and  done  nothing  but  mope  through  the  absolutely 
necessary  tasks.  .  .  .  Remember  that  thou  also  hast  a  liver, 
that  bile  is  a  demon,  and  consider  that  if  friendly  charity 
doth  not  mightily  widen  her  folds  by  reason  of  it,  we  are 
of  all  men  most  miserable.  I  have  read  nothing,  as  I  have 
written  nothing,  and  am  just  beginning  to  stir,  these  fine 
spring  days.  I  have  had  to  put  aside  invitations  to  lecture, 
and  spend  my  time  in  the  wretched  business  of  taking  care 
of  myself.     But  I  hope  better  things  now. 

And  so  your  chapel  is  to  be !  This  is  the  second  good 
word  that  has  come  this  early  May-time.  The  other  is 
Wasson's  call  to  Worcester.  ...  I  must  tell  you  of  T.  T. 
Stone's  magnificent  Lectures  on  English  Literature  we  are 


MEMOIR.  51 

hearing  in  Salem.  He  takes  the  tale,  the  drama,  the  alle- 
gory, the  essay,  the  song,  the  sermon,  traces  them  through  all 
their  forms  back  to  the  religious  sentiment,  and  views  them 
as  spiritualities,  forms  of  the  Divine  in  man.  Think  what 
a  theme,  and  how  Stone  would  treat  it,  and  add  an  intelli- 
gibility for  the  common  mind  you  would  not  expect !  They 
are  wonderful  for  deep,  mystical  philosophy  and  critical 
analysis  alike,  full  of  sweetness  and  holiness,  and  hold  you 
upon  heights  of  vision  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  They 
are  the  most  completely  original,  suggestive,  and  fascinating, 

I  ever  heard.     Tell  M and  the  others  that  this  is  the 

course  of  lectures  to  be  listened  to  by  all  thoughtful  persons 
in  the  land.     Let  this  be  the  first  series  in  the  Chapel. 

January  6,  1858. 
Did  but  the  "  hard  times  "  permit !  We  seem  to  be  get- 
ting over  the  immediate  panic  better  than  was  expected. 
We  are  recovering  too  fast,  I  fear,  to  learn  the  lesson.  But 
when  the  extended  notes  fall  due  doubtless  there  will  be 
another  crash.  With  all  the  trouble,  how  grand  it  is  to 
see  the  complexity  of  business  unraveled  so  and  its  secrets 
laid  bare,  and  its  conceit  taken  out  of  it,  and  the  honest 
man  proved  the  wiser  and  the  indispensable  man !  .  .  . 
How  much  comfort  you  will  take  in  that  same  humble  man- 
ger [the  New  Chapel]  and  to  have  escaped  the  bleak  wastes 
of  the  Athenaeum,  where  you  were  lost,  and  to  gather  your 
flock  under  your  eye  and  hand.  I  long  to  find  my  way 
there.  They  tell  me  in  Lynn  that  the  Free  Church  would 
grow  more,  if  we  had  a  more  commodious  hall.  I  have 
often  thought  of  the  Brooklyn  Athenagum,  and  said,  "  Is  a 
boy  likely  to  grow  faster  for  wearing  man's  clothes  ?  " 
Doubtless  a  better  hall  would  give  an  air  of  "  respectabil- 
ity "  which  a  Free  Church  lacks  (of  itself)  in  the  eye  of  the 
public  generally.  Foregleams  of  such  a  migration  occa- 
sionally shoot  across  the  day  and  may  come  to  something. 

Are  you  not  glad  to  see  the  new  Monthly  —  the  Atlantic  2- 
The  first  number  disappointed  me  in  respect  of  earnestness 


62  MEMOIR. 

and  scholarship.  But  I  think  we  may  expect  the  best 
things  from  the  way  the  work  goes  on.  The  grand  position 
it  has  taken  politically  will  secure  it  the  upward  track  in 
every  form  of  literature.  What  a  step  to  put  itself  free 
from  toadyism  to  slavery  !  Emerson's  pieces  and  the  arti- 
cle on  Carlyle  almost  promise  that  we  are  to  have  "  the 
Dial  with  a  beard."  [This  was  Theodore  Parker's  charac- 
terization of  the  Massachusetts  Quarterly.'] 

I  have  been  reading  Agassiz's  Contributions,  He  seems 
to  be  laying  foundations  for  an  immense  structure.  And, 
to  judge  from  the  introductory  chapters  on  the  grand  gen- 
eral relations  of  animals  and  their  classification,  we  are  to 
have^a  complete  system  of  natural  history  developed.  There 
is  a  perfectly  encyclopedic  experience  hinted  and  etched 
out  in  these  chapters.  Whether  the  point  he  elaborates  is 
worth  the  pains  is  a  question,  I  think.  It  will  take  more 
than  Agassiz  to  prove  that  our  classifications  are  God's  act- 
ual thinking,  rather  than  man's  conception  of  the  universe. 
This  anthropomorphism,  I  confess,  shocks  me.  I  like  my 
old  Brahmins  better  who  only  said,  God  is.  As  I  don't  be- 
lieve that  God  talks  Hebrew,  or  sent  Cotton  Mather's  "  spe- 
cial Providences,"  so  I  don't  believe  He  thinks  genera  and 
species  as  we  do.  Probably  we  shall  find  out  how  things 
stand  in  "  God's  mind "  when  the  lesser  circle  contains 
the  greater.  But  Agassiz's  purpose  is  good  if  his  meta- 
physics are  shallow.  And  his  proofs  that  animal  life  could 
not  have  sprung  from  physical  causes,  in  the  ordinary  sense, 
are  full  of  fine  suggestions. 

You  must  read  [O.  B.  Frothingham's]  review  of  Baur's 
works,  in  the  last  Christian  Examiner.  It  is  a  fine  state- 
ment ;  but  why  "  hope  that  the  school  may  not  triumph  "  ? 
I  find  my  study  of  Baur  has  given  me  no  such  anxieties. 
Nor  do  I  understand  how,  after  so  fair  and  impressive  an 
exposition  of  Baur's  historical  criticism,  he  can  lament  that 
it  does  not  recognize  the  personal  influence  and  character 
of  Jesus.    But,  as  a  statement  of  the  position  of  the  Tubin- 


I 


MEMOIR.  53 

gen  school,  it  is  admirable.     And  to  see  it  in  the  Exam- 
iner is  surely  a  hopeful  sign. 

Have  you  done  anything  toward  preparing  to  improve 
the  Booh  of  Hymns  ?  I  have  not  directly,  but  am  contin- 
ually on  the  point  of  setting  about  it.  Nothing  but  want 
of  leisure  prevents.  Do  you  find  it  still  represents  your 
theological  stand-point?  I  shudder  to  say  that  there  are 
almost  a  half  hundred  hymns  in  that  book  which  my  tongue 
refuses  to  utter.  The  hymns  about  Jesus,  especially,  look 
weaker  and  thinner  every  year.  Still,  on  the  whole,  I 
think  it  the  best  groundwork  for  the  coming  Hymn-Book. 

In  February  be  sends  a  hymn,  for  the  dedication 
of  New  Chapel,  — 

"  To  Light  that  shines  in  stars  and  souls, 
To  Law  that  rounds  the  world  with  calm." 

I  think  you  do  well  to  conduct  the  services  at  the  Dedi- 
cation yourself.  I  like  the  simplicity  and  self-reliance  of 
the  method.  It  has  a  sturdy  look  as  if  you  meant  the 
movement  should  go  on  its  own  feet,  and  live  by  its  own 
worth.  .  .  .  You  may  set  me  down  for  April  1st,  though 
it  be  Fool's-day ;  and  the  lecture  on  Beauty  you  shall 
have,  though  it  look  a  little  musty. 

April  12,  1858. 

I  passed  a  sufficiently  uncomfortable  night  on  board  the 
boat.  I  don't  know  whether  anything  less  than  the  kind- 
ness and  hospitality  of  so  many  friends  in  New  York  and 
Brooklyn,  and  the  pleasure  of  being  with  you  once  a  year 
at  least,  would  induce  me  to  pay  such  a  price  as  this  atro- 
cious steaming  and  earring  to  Gotham  and  back.  How- 
ever it  always  does  me  great  good  to  make  such  a  visit. 
We  suburbans  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  get  a  sense  of  ex- 
pansion through  the  great  business  life  of  New  York  ;  and 
what  is  better  still,  lose  ourselves  in  the  flood  of  human  ex- 
istence that  sweeps  through  the  monstrous  Broadway  ar- 
tery.    Anything  that  will  help  one  lose  himself  in  an  im- 


54  MEMOIR. 

measurable  unknown  is  of  infinite  service.  Intellectual 
and  moral  radicalism,  to  be  sure,  is  comparatively  wanting 
there  ;  and,  so  far  as  the  masses  are  concerned,  you  feel 
that  you  are  to  begin  some  ways  back  to  prepare  them  for 
your  best  thought,  and  put  them  into  a  position  where  they 
can  learn  to  think  and  act  freely.  But  then,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  does  one  good  to  escape  this  fever  of  thought,  this 
tremendous  drain  on  the  moral  consciousness  and  the  power 
of  aspiration;  this  immense  logical  requirement  of  the  moral 
idea,  when  so  fully  comprehended  as  it  is  here,  —  even 
though  one  falls  into  the  current  of  another  fever,  even  the 
business  fever. 

April  12,  1858. 

I  don't  know  whether  I  told  you  how  very  much  I  en- 
joyed preaching  in  Brooklyn  ;  the  whole  tone  and  sur- 
rounding, the  spirit  I  saw  in  the  people,  and  the  promise, 
the  whole  aspect  of  things  gave,  that  you  had  fairly  started 
on  the  work  that  fairly  belongs  to  you,  and  in  which  you 
will  effect  what  is  so  much  needed  —  the  putting  of  the 
religious  sentiment  into  the  free  thought  that  is  starting 
up  with  prodigious  energy. 

I  heard  a  good  thing  of  Emerson.    He  and  Parker  were 

together  at  a  party,  when  D came  up,  and,  ignoring 

Parker,  addressed  himself  to  Emerson.  When  he  turned 
away,  Emerson  broke  out,  —  "  One  might  conceive  of  ignor- 
ing the  Boston  ministers  generally,  but  to  ignore  one  of 
the  Lord's  officials  !  "  Have  you  seen  Parker  on  the  Re- 
vivals ? 

September  24,  1858. 

I  was  entirely  content  with  the  good  people  of  the  Prov- 
ince [Nova  Scotia],  with  whom  I  found  myself  perfectly  at 
home  in  farm-houses,  wayside  inns,  academical  and  private 
cabinets,  etc.  I  spent  many  weeks  clambering  about  the 
cliffs  of  the  Basin  of  INIinas,  tracking  wonderful  ranges  of 
bluffs,  carved  and  weather-colored  and  ripple-marked  and 
heaved  aloft  and  broken  down  in    all  mysterious  ways; 


MEMOIR.  65 

pounding  rocks  for  fossils  and  poking  fissures  and  air-bul)- 
bles  of  venerable  lavas  to  find  minerals  ;  yachting  in  great 
waters  of  sixty  feet  tide,  where  the  spirits  in  the  air  and 
under  the  keel  were  more  shifty  and  wizard  than  those  the 
Ancient  Mariner  had  to  encounter ;  groping  about  in  mines 
two  hundred  feet  under  ground ;  and  marveling  greatly  at 
the  exposures  of  the  old  coal  formation  no  less  than  three 
miles  in  thickness,  telling  the  geological  of  such  a  lapse  of 
time  as  suggests  the  old  Buddhists  who  counted  by  Kalpas 
instead  of  years.  Altogether  Nova  Scotia  is  a  wonderful 
region,  with  any  amount  of  capacity  for  wild  adventure 
and  search  for  beauty.  Grand  Pre  is  lovely,  with  its  pleas- 
ant round  knolls  and  broad  green  meadows,  rimmed  in  by 
the  old  dikes  from  the  monstrous  tides,  and  waving  with 
noble  harvests  as  for  a  hundred  years.  Here  are  old  French 
cellars,  orchards,  roads ;  but  the  families  are  all  gone,  and 
there  seems  to  be  very  little  sympathy  for  them  among  the 
people.  I  think  these  Nova  Scotians  have  the  freest  gov- 
ernment in  the  world,  though  scarcely  able  to  appreciate 
their  advantages  ;  no  public  schools,  only  one  railroad,  and 
a  deal  of  theological  bigotry,  which  stands  in  the  way  of 
education.  But  no  stock  could  be  fuller  of  the  love  of  lib- 
erty ;  and  no  race  of  better  behavior  or  more  plain  and  con- 
tented habits.  They  love  England,  and  are  wise  enough  not 
to  believe  in  Annexation  to  American  Manifest  Destiny. 

October  26,  1858. 
Dear  S.,  —  I  have  just  preached  a  sermon  at  Parker's 

which ,  with  best  intentions  doubtless,  intends,  wholly 

against  my  wishes  of  course,  to  report  for  the  Christian 
Inquirer.     You  see  at  once  the  peril.     It  is  n't  a  pleasant 

prospect  to  be  interpreted  to  the  public  by .     Can't 

you  at  least  see  that  I  am  not  made  to  say  anything  very 
absurd?  My  sermon  was  theologically  radical,  as  you 
may  suppose,  being  an  attempt  to  state  the  foundations  of 
religious  faith ;  laying  them  in  the  spiritual  constitution  of 


66  MEMOIR. 

man,  rather  than  in  the  Bible,  the  official  Jesus,  or  the 
Creeds ;  and  affirming  that,  by  the  very  conditions  of  his- 
torical growth,  this  age  could  see  more  of  the  meaning  of 
the  grand  truths  of  Christianity  than  Jesus  himself.  But 
I,  of  course,  didn't  make  any  such  foolish  statement  as 
that  Swedenborg  had  more  inspiration  than  Jesus,  which 
was 's  coarse  impression,  as  he  informed  me. 

December,  1858. 
The  sermon  [at  the  Unitarian  Convention]  was  a  feeble 
attempt  to  put  together  the  official  Jesus,  as  fullness  of 
God  made  flesh,  with  the  historical  idea  of  Christianity  as  a 
natural  growth,  a  link  in  the  chain  of  human  development ; 
an  attempt  wherein,  of  course  the  genuine  force  of  both 
doctrines  was  utterly  whiffled  away. 

Have  you  read  Wasson's  noble  article  on  Sacrifice  in 
the  Christian  Examiner;  and  the  "All's  Well"  in  the 
Atlantic'^  I  hardly  know  where  we  shall  find  anything 
so  jubilant  and  altogether  adequate  as  this  last.  It  is  like 
the  finest  things  in  Vaughan  and  Herbert,  only  on  a  higher 
plane. 

I  am  reading  [Carlyle's]  Frederic.  Refreshingly  ear- 
nest, of  course ;  severe  often  to  the  point  of  sublimity  ;  in- 
conceivably worked  out  to  the  minutest  details  of  fact; 
petulant,  savage  often  ;  unmerciful  as  usual  to  the  weak ; 
with  all  the  faults  and  all  the  splendors  and  all  the  noble- 
nesses of  Carlyle.  To  offset  that,  I  have  been  hearing  five 
lectures  from  Emerson.  "  Self-possession  "  is  especially 
fine.     You  should  get  him  to  give  you  that  in  Brooklyn. 

My  reading  is  miscellaneous  just  now  :  Kenan's  Lan- 
gues  Semiiiques,  Livingstone's  Africa,  Koeppen's  Buddha, 
Jewish  Literature,  Life  of  J.  Q.  Adams,  etc.  Free  Church 
about  as  usual ;  a  little  pushed  for  funds,  many  disposed 
to  let  a  few  pay  more  than  their  share,  the  usual  difficul- 


MEMOIR.  67 

ties  which  beset  a  free  church.  Still  I  think  they  will 
weather  the  hard  times;  and  they  are  kind,  tolerant, and 
appreciative  as  ever. 

February  28,  1859. 

Wasson  is  better.  Good  news  from  Parker,  too  ;  I  hope 
significant  of  real  restoration.  He  has  stood  the  severe 
sea-sickness  so  well  that  he  is  in  as  good  way  as  when  he 
left  New  York. 

I  lectured  at  Concord  last  week  and  had  a  charming  time, 
seeing  Emerson,  Sanborn,  Thoreau,  Mr.  Eipley,  etc.  Also 
at  Parker's  on  the  Sunday  subsequent,  where  there  is  no 
diminution  of  interest  in  continuing  the  services  since  his 

departure.     Think   of   the   absurdity,  however  of   's 

[an  evangelical  Unitarian]  going  there  and  pretending  that 
it  was  a  great  piece  of  bravery  and  liberality  in  him  ! 

June  1,  1859. 
I  can't  tell  you  how  sorry  I  was  to  be  obliged  to  refuse 
going  to  Brooklyn  for  you  [on  exchange].  .  .  .  "WTiom  do 
you  think  appeared  on  Saturday  night  at  Lynn,  and  whom 
do  you  suppose  you  would  have  had  to  introduce,  as  I  did, 
to  a  meeting  in  Sagamore  Hall,  had  you  been  in  my  place, 
—  but  old  Osawatomie  Brown  of  Kansas,  who  was  there  to 
tell  his  story  of  that  noble  exodus  of  slaves  which  he  car- 
ried through  in  triumph  last  winter.  He  is  a  genuine  old 
Revolutionist,  and  believes  with  all  his  soul  and  all  his 
life  that  slavery  has  no  rights  upon  the  earth.  There 
seems  to  be  not  a  tinge  of  revenge,  and  anything  but  a  dis- 
position to  shed  blood,  in  this  old  warrior,  though  he  has 
terribly  suffered  from  slavery,  one  son  being  murdered  by 
the  border-ruffians  and  another  driven  mad  from  cruelties 
inflicted  by  them.  He  says  he  has  a  call  to  kindle  a  fire 
in  their  rear  in  Missouri  itself ;  and  the  terror  he  inspires 
may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  a  price  of  three  thousand 
dollars  is  set  on  his  head  by  Missouri,  and  two  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars  by  Buchanan.     Methods   differ,  but  such  self- 


58  MEMOIR. 

sacrifice  and  practical  devotion  to  the  slave  is  exceedingly- 
refreshing  in  these  days.  He  is  after  aid  in  carrying  on 
his  plans  of  delivering  the  slaves. 

October  17,  1859. 

"  When,  oh  when,  shall  we  draw  near  "  to  each  other  to 
the  fulfillment  of  the  cherished  purpose  of  perfecting 
the  hymn-book  ?  I  write  now  to  ask  if  you  can  send  me 
five  of  your  vesper-books.  Do  not  flatter  yourself  that  you 
have  made  a  convert  to  your  celestial  methods  of  "Art 
devoted  to  Religion,"  or  that  little  bare  Sagamore  Hall 
is  about  trying  to  vie  with  New  Chapel  in  aesthetic  things. 
I  only  want  the  book  for  the  chants,  which  I  desire  my 
choir  to  have  the  benefit  of. 

Try  the  Vespers  and  do  what  you  can  with  them.  While 
you  lead  them  I  do  not  fear  the  coming  in  of  pyx  and  chasu- 
ble. I  recognize  all  that  charms  you,  and  know  you  will 
not  let  it  degenerate  into  formalism.  I  especially  recognize 
the  need  of  nobler,  purer  music  in  our  religious  service,  of 
everything  which  can  broaden,  refine,  yes,  exhilarate  the 
religious  sentiment. 

All  this  work  at  last  told  upon  Johnson's  constitu- 
tion, never  quite  robust.  Something  more  was  needed 
of  rest  and  restoration  than  the  summer  vacations 
and  tours  afforded.  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  per- 
suade him  to  accompany  me  on  a  trip  to  Europe,  on 
which  I  was  setting  out.  As  he  felt  the  need  of  at 
least  a  year's  absence  from  his  work,  he  thought  right 
to  offer  his  resignation  in  the  following  letter :  — 

TO    THE    CONGREGATION    OF    THE    FREE    CHURCH. 

Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  March  9,  1860. 
Dear  Friends,  —  It  was  with  great  sorrow  that  I  felt 
compelled,  a  short  time  since,  to  seek  a  respite  from  my 
labors  in  Lynn.     Finding,  as  I  did  in  these  labors,  the  high- 


J 


MEMOIR.  69 

est  happiness  of  my  life,  I  could  not  easily  bring  myself  to 
accept  the  necessity  for  even  a  brief  intermission  of  them. 
For  eight  years  I  have  been  your  minister,  speaking  to  you 
as  unreservedly  as  to  my  own  soul  of  the  great  concerns  of 
piety,  knowledge,  and  love,  according  to  the  measure  of  my 
progress  therein  from  week  to  week,  and  from  year  to  year. 
With  your  families  I  have  formed  ties  of  sympathy  which 
cannot  be  broken,  and  which  have  helped  me  in  my  spirit- 
ual and  moral  needs  more  than  I  can  tell.  You  have  ever 
accorded  to  my  words  such  earnest  and  thoughtful  attention 
as  is  rarely  found  even  in  our  New  England  congregations. 
Through  many  discouragements  you  have  maintained  a  free 
pulpit,  wherein  all  thought  which  promised  well  for  hu- 
manity has  received  a  cordial  welcome ;  you  have  been 
willing  to  hear  and  prove  all  things ;  in  large  degree  also, 
I  think,  sought  to  hold  fast  what  is  good.  To  me  your  kind 
hospitalities  have  been  incessant,  and  all  my  deficiencies 
have  been  affectionately  covered  by  your  recognition  of  the 
great  principles  of  love  and  liberty  which  we  were  set  to 
maintain.  .  .  . 

But  though  gaining  strength  I  am  more  and  more  con- 
vinced that  I  now  need  a  much  longer  period  than  I  had 
supposed,  certainly  not  less  than  six  or  eight  months,  of  en- 
tire freedom  from  my  charge. 

I  wish  you  to  understand  that  while  I  do  not  seek  to  dis- 
solve my  connection  with  a  body  of  men  and  women  so 
fully  answering  to  my  needs  and  aims,  I  would  have  you 
feel  at  perfect  liberty,  under  these  circumstances,  to  avail 
yourselves  permanently  of  any  services  which  you  may 
judge  suited  to  your  own. 

You  will  understand,  I  am  sure,  that  this  step  is  not 
taken  without  great  reluctance,  and  that  it  proceeds  only 
from  a  well-considered  sense  of  duty  to  you  and  to  myself. 
For  it  is  surely  a  time  when  no  man,  who  holds  in  trust 
the  principles  of  civil,  political,  and  religious  liberty  has  a 
right  to  be  off  his  post  of  influence,  while  he  has  power  to 


60  MEMOIR. 

hold  it.  Who  shall  dare  be  sileut  even  for  a  day,  while 
the  nation  is  persecuting  its  prophets,  and  sending  its  saints 
to  the  scaffold,  while  the  public  conscience  seems  to  be 
drugged  and  stifled  almost  beyond  rousing,  and  to  look 
with  a  kind  of  vacant  unconcern  upon  insidious  processes 
by  which  the  national  legislature  is  being  turned  into  a 
court  of  inquisitorial  powers,  and  the  national  judiciary 
into  mere  machinery  for  the  swift  destruction  of  inaliena- 
ble liberties !  I  have  much  more  to  say  of  these  things, 
whereof  I  have  already  said  so  much. 

November  26,  1860. 
The  Free  Church  people  were  rather  taken  by  surprise,  but 
retained  sufficient  presence  of  mind  to  pass  very  kind  and 
regretful  resolutions,  accepting  my  resignation,  and  trust- 
ing to  my  return  among  them.  Parker  is  actually  coming 
home  in  a  month.  I  fear  the  consequences  to  him  ;  I  fear 
also  that  it  indicates  his  health  to  be  unimproved. 


VII. 

In  the  early  summer  of  1860,  we  took  passage  for 
Liverpool.  After  a  few  days  in  that  city  and  in  Lon- 
don we  ran  over  to  the  Isle  of  Wight,  spending  a  week 
in  walking  through  that  charming  epitome  of  English 
rural  scenery.  Then  hastening  through  Paris  to 
Switzerland,  we  spent  two  months  there,  half  in  foot- 
travel.  We  got  our  first  exciting  vision  of  the  snow 
mountains,  after  two  or  three  days'  waiting,  from  the 
Enge,  just  outside  of  Bern.  There,  beyond  the  nearer 
hills  and  against  the  far  sky,  as  the  reluctant  mists 
lifted,  we  saw  the  marvelous  reach  of  the  Bernese 
Alps  ;  peak  after  peak  moulded,  as  it  seemed,  of  some 
celestial  substance  of  dazzling  glory  and  soft  blue 
shadow ;  in  the  centre  the  Jungfrau,  lifted  like  the 


MEMOIR.  61 

"  great  white  throne  "  of  the  Apocalypse.  Toward 
those  hills  we  set  out  in  the  morning,  and  at  evening 
saw  them  flush  into  a  passionate  glow  and  then  fade 
into  a  pallor  "  beyond  death  "  my  companion  said. 
A  month's  foot-travel  followed  through  the  changing 
grandeur  and  beauty,  whiteness  and  verdure,  of  that 
wonderful  land,  where  all  possible  charms  of  nature 
are  concentrated.  We  walked,  I  remember,  with 
easy  independence,  now  one  far  ahead  and  now  the 
other,  as  we  stopped,  now  to  sketch  —  Johnson's 
sketches,  though  unskilled,  always  caught  the  char- 
acteristic forms — now  to  ask  "how  far"  of  some 
short  brown-coated  peasant,  or  to  return  the  greeting 
of  some  brown-faced  boy  lifting  his  hat,  or  to  buy 
berries  or  Alp-roses  of  some  sweet  demure-faced  little 
girl ;  or  to  throw  ourselves  tired  upon  the  turf,  till 
roused  by  the  organ-like-echoes  of  an  Alp-horn.  The 
month  of  October  we  spent  at  Glion,  high  up  above 
Montreux,  on  the  shores  of  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  — 
so  pleasantly  pictured  in  Matthew  Arnold's  Oher- 
mann  Once  More.  There  we  stayed,  —  intercalating 
a  trip  to  Chamounix,  where  I  had  the  delight,  waking 
early  one  morning,  to  see  from  my  window,  in  the 
gray  half  -  dawn,  the  morning  -  star  lingering  above 
the  *' awful  front"  of  Mont  Blanc  — till  the  maples 
turned  to  gold,  and  the  grapes  to  purple,  and  the  au- 
tumn mists  began  to  warn  us  toward  Italy.  Going 
by  Nismes  and  Marseilles  to  Nice,  we  spent  there  a 
month.  There,  shut  into  the  house  by  constant  rains, 
we  set  to  work  upon  arranging  our  materials  for  the 
Hymns  of  the  Spirit^  which  we  thought  it  was  high 
time  should  replace  the  out-grown  Book  of  Hymns^ 
and  which  was  published  after  our  return,  in  1864. 
There,  in  a  damp  chamber  of  the  "  Pension  Besson," 


62  MEMOIR. 

Johnson  wrote  the  hymns,  "  City  of  God  how  broad 
and  far  "  (637)  ;  "  TheWill  divine  that  woke  a  wait- 
ing time  "  (657)  ;  and,  I  think,  "  Life  of  Ages,  richly 
poured"  (633),  which  last  it  seems  to  me  must  take 
the  place  in  the  new  church  which  Toplady's  "  Rock 
of  Ages  "  holds  in  the  old.  The  winter  we  passed 
in  Florence,  taking  rooms  in  the  Casa  Pini,  far  down 
the  Lung'  Arno.  Romola  was  not  then  written, 
but  all  the  places  mentioned  in  it  became  very  famil- 
iar to  our  feet.  Many  hours,  of  course,  were  spent  in 
the  galleries  of  the  Uffizii,  the  Pitti  and  Academia. 
Andrea  del  Sarto  with  his  fine  human  quality,  and 
Fra  Angelico  with  his  seraphic  sweetness,  grew  very 
attractive  to  us ;  and  Masaccio  at  the  Carmine.  I 
remember  a  very  delicate  criticism  of  Johnson's  upon 
a  "Last  Supper"  of  Andrea's  in  an  old  convent  out- 
side of  the  city.  He  saw  that  the  painter  had  made 
Jesus,  in  that  moment  of  desolation,  involuntarily  put 
his  hand  upon  that  of  the  beloved  disciple  who  was 
next  to  him,  —  a  fine  touch  of  human  feeling. 

We  visited  the  studios  of  the  American  sculptors 
then  living  in  Florence  —  Powers,  Hart,  and  Jack- 
son. We  looked  up  at  Casa  Guidi  windows.  We 
*'  watched  the  sunsets  from  the  Arno  bridges "  far 
over  the  jasper  and  wine-purple  hills.  We  learned 
to  love  the  sober  beauty  of  the  Cathedral's  nave,  and 
the  jeweled  windows  of  its  choir,  where  in  the  shadow 
behind  the  altar  stands  Buonarotti's  wonderful  group 
of  grief.  Pleasant  in  our  ears  was  the  perpetual 
musical  jangle  of  the  convent  bells,  varied  now  and 
then  by  the  "  solemn  roar  "  of  the  Misericordia.  We 
took  long  rambles  to  Fiesole,  to  Bellosguardo,  to 
Galileo's  tower,  and  Monte  Oliveto.  We  saw  from 
the  cypresses  of  the  Boboli  Gardens  the  "  bright  vig- 


MEMOIR.  63 

nettes  of  tower  and  Duomo  sunny  sweet "  :  and  gath- 
ered there  ivies  to  plant  on  Theodore  Parker's  grave 
in  the  little  Protestant  Cemetery.  Spring  came,  the 
great  purple  and  red  anemones  bloomed  in  those 
gardens,  and  the  primroses  in  the  Cascine.  And  then 
we  parted ;  I  to  go  south  to  Rome  and  Naples,  he  to 
return  homeward  through  Germany. 

TO    HIS    SISTER    K. 

Bern,  August  7,  1860. 
I  must  take  you  with  me  to  the  Isle  of  Wight  and  on  a  de- 
lightful walk  of  a  week  among  the  villages  and  the  downs 
of  that  most  lovely  and  quiet  region.  As  it  is  but  about 
twenty  miles  long  by  nine  or  ten  broad,  the  tour  of  it  is 
easily  made  in  that  pleasant  way  of  short  walks  and  leisurely 
rests,  which  is  the  charm  of  traveling,  without  permitting 
any  uncomfortable  feeling  of  slow  progress.  One  gets  on 
quite  as  fast  as  he  wishes  to  the  end  of  his  little  island 
circuit,  and  at  every  few  miles  is  a  pleasant  old  church  in 
the  Norman  or  the  early  English  style,  with  its  low  tower, 
its  simple  roof,  its  slender  windows  and  round  arches,  all 
clothed  with  ivy  and  flowers  as  with  a  garment  of  immortal 
life,  and  its  old  monuments  within  and  without  written  in 
stone  and  in  story.  Close  by,  a  rectory  embosomed  in  trees 
and  gardens,  and  always  a  pretty  specimen  of  old-fashioned 
building  lovingly  preserved  ;  then  around  this  the  narrow 
village  streets,  with  uneven  lines  of  gables,  thatched  eaves, 
overlapping  stories,  bay  -  windows,  lattices  bright  with 
flowers,  all  running  in  and  out  in  all  possible  directions ; 
with  children  playing  everywhere  under  the  great  trees, 
always  respectful  in  their  behavior,  and  scarcely  ever  show- 
ing signs  of  destitution  even  in  the  poorest  parts  of  the 
island ;  then  on  the  nearest  hill  is  usually  a  manorial  castle 
or  mansion,  with  its  park  and  well-tilled  grounds,  occupied 
not  generally  by  noblemen,  but  by  gentlemen  of  property, 
who  have  purchased  the  old  feudal  seat  and  rent  the  land 


64  MEMOIR. 

around  to  independent  peasantry.  "We  skirted  the  shore  of 
the  island  from  Ryde  south,  and  then  went  to  Freshwater 
Bay,  then  struck  into  the  interior  to  Newport  the  capital 
town,  then  north  to  Cowes,  and  so  back  to  Southampton. 
I  can  only  give  you  a  running  sketch.  Friday,  the  20th 
July,  we  left  Southampton  on  the  steamer,  and  reached 
Ryde  after  a  little  shower,  under  a  clear  sky,  and  in  a  fine 
breezy  air.  We  went  up  the  long  half-mile  pier  into  the 
neat  white  town,  past  pleasant  balconies  of  flowery  ter- 
races, and  walked  straight  out  to  Binstead,  through  the 
hedgerows,  to  visit  a  quarry,  for  geological  purposes. 
The  Isle  of  Wight  is  very  interesting  geologically,  showing 
a  succession  of  recent  tertiary  deposits  lying  upon  the 
earlier  series  of  the  chalk  and  wealden,  all  which,  by  means 
of  prodigious  inundations  in  remote  ages,  have  been  laid 
bare  along  the  shores  in  enormous  cliffs.  The  great  chalk 
downs  rise  in  domes  along  these  shores ;  and  across  the 
middle  of  the  island,  on  either  side,  are  later  formations 
leaning  against  them,  as  it  were,  they  having  been  thrown  up 
with  the  underlying  wealden  strata  by  some  huge  upheaval, 
parting  the  strata  above  them.  At  nightfall  we  reached 
Brading,  a  narrow  street  of  very  old  and  rather  dismal 
looking  houses,  whose  leaning  doors  and  rambling  windows 
did  not  seem  very  inviting ;  but  the  "  Bugle  "  turned  out 
a  very  nice  little  inn  after  all.  I  wish  you  could  have  seen 
my  chamber  up  in  the  eaves.  There  was  no  better  in  the 
house ;  it  was  neat  as  the  best  New  England  parlor,  tiny 
as  a  bird's-nest,  with  two  lattices  about  two  feet  square,  a 
white  bed  with  nice  curtains  filling  nearly  half  of  it  up  to 
the  low  ceiling  (across  which  ran  an  old-fashioned  beam), 
one  or  two  queer  little  chairs,  and  a  clean  brown  floor.  Here 
I  passed  a  good  night,  and  next  morning,  although  the  clouds 
threatened,  we  sallied  out  to  look  at  the  old  church.  It  is 
the  oldest  perhaps  on  the  island,  being  that  in  which  Chris- 
tianity was  first  preached  in  the  island,  about  a  thousand 
years  ago  !    Much  of  the  earliest  work  remains  in  it.    Here 


MEMOIR.  65 

we  saw  the  monuments  of  the  Oglander  family  of  the  time 
of  the  English  Revolution,  placed  in  shrines,  which  filled 
up  the  whole  corner  of  the  church.  The  stout  knights,  cut 
in  wood,  lay  in  full  armor  leaning  on  their  elbows  upon 
the  tombstones,  and  had  a  very  grotesque  look.  The  old 
windows  had  been  replaced  in  many  parts  of  the  church  by 
fiat-headed  lights  of  later  style,  and  we  could  see  how  cen- 
tury after  century  the  needs  of  modern  faith  and  form  had 
gradually  introduced  more  and  more  light  into  the  dark 
places.  This  was  the  curacy  of  Richmond,  author  of  The 
Dairyman's  Daughter,  a  story  in  great  repute  among  the 
evangelical  peasantry,  and  which  has  gained  a  wide  celeb- 
rity. Here  he  devoted  himself  to  the  improvement  of  a 
rough,  uneducated  people,  and  wrote  many  descriptions  of 
the  scenery  and  manners  of  the  Isle  of  Wight.  As  soon  as 
the  weather  allowed,  we  mounted  the  hills  and  crossed  to 
Culver  Cliff,  a  great  white  chalk  precipice,  looking  out  to 
sea.  To  reach  it  we  passed  along  a  dizzy  verge,  over 
which  the  shore  looked  dwarfed,  and  the  lazy  roll  of  the 
waves  below  was  scarcely  audible.  The  harebells  and  a 
profusion  of  other  brilliant  flowers  covered  the  rich  green 
slopes  on  one  side  of  us,  while  the  monstrous  chasm  yawned 
on  the  other.  The  air  was  cool  and  refreshing,  and  it  was 
grand  to  look  far  off  to  sea,  beyond  the  white  headlands, 
and  watch  the  vessels  come  and  go  along  the  horizon.  We 
went  down  to  the  shore  by  a  steep  path,  and  I  sought  the 
wonderful  chalk  fossils  I  had  so  often  longed  for,  though 
without  the  success  I  had  expected,  the  rock  requiring 
heavier  blows  than  my  small  hammer  could  give.  But  I 
obtained  a  few  pretty  specimens,  and  we  went  along  the 
shore,  observing  the  junction  of  the  chalk  with  the  later 
strata  of  sandstones,  and  the  exquisite  colors  of  the  differ- 
ent layers,  warmed  and  softened  past  the  power  of  painter 
to  render  or  tongue  to  describe.  Then  up  the  cliffs  again 
to  Sandown,  and  on  to  Shanklin  in  a  rain.  Here  we  seemed 
to  have  fallen  from  fortune's  favor  at  once.  We  reached 
5 


66  MEMOIR. 

the  tow^n  in  a  rain  late  in  the  evening  and  had  no  choice  of 
hotels ;  the  only  rooms  we  could  get  were  above  the  eaves 
and  could  not  be  ventilated  ;  the  sole  window  of  one  was 
in  the  roof  above  and  opened  by  pulling  a  string,  and  that 
of  the  other  had  no  string  and  opened  on  a  mass  of  black 
wet  roofs.  Next  morning  we  came  down  quite  discontent- 
ed, but  were  thrown  into  raptures  at  finding  ourselves  in  a 
lovely  breakfast  room,  opening  out  by  a  bay-window  into 
a  great  garden  lawn  covered  with  trees  and  flowers  and 
overhung  by  woody  steeps,  all  glowing  in  the  splendor  of 
sunshine.  That  beautiful  Sunday  morning  we  shall  never 
forget.  Shanklin  is  our  ideal  of  an  English  village,  which, 
after  the  half  dozen  rhapsodies  I  have  indulged  in  upon 
the  subject  in  this  and  my  letter  to  A.,  I  must  leave  you  to 
imagine  for  yourself.  The  Sunday  quiet  here  was  specially 
delightful,  as  we  went  along  between  the  ivy,  holly,  and 
hawthorn  hedges,  looking  over  at  the  bowers  and  sunny  ar- 
cades of  honeysuckle,  convolvulus,  and  all  other  flowers  that 
love  to  twine  about  cottage  houses.  We  wanted  at  every 
moment  to  carry  away  some  image  of  the  loveliness  we 
saw,  and  put  something  of  this  quiet  simple  good  taste  and 
lowly  grace  into  our  New  England  villages,  where  people 
have  not  yet  learned  to  be  satisfied  with  a  little  space,  and 
to  fill  it  well,  by  making  the  most  of  natural  means  and 
opportunities.  "We  climbed  the  downs  above.  They  looked 
over  the  village  embowered  in  trees,  and  the  great  bay 
sweeping  inwards  in  perfect  curve  from  the  Culver  CliS 
white  in  the  distance  ;  the  many  colored  lines  of  stratifica- 
tion showing  plainly  along  the  precipices  and  telling  by 
their  inclinations  on  either  side  the  story  of  the  earthquake- 
like convulsion  which  had  heaved  up  their  quiet  sediments 
from  the  depths  of  ancient  seas.  We  saw  what  an  enor- 
mous mountain  of  chalk  had  been  swept  away  by  ages  of 
fluvial  and  tidal  motion.  All  up  the  rich  hill-sides  white 
cottages  and  red  roofs  peeped  out  from  clumps  of  old  trees, 
and   amidst   them  brown  spires  and  towers  of   churches. 


MEMOIR.  67 

At  Bonchurch,  the  next  village,  we  visited  Sterling's  grave. 
The  poet's  monument  is  only  a  plain  stone  marked  John 
Sterling,  with  date  and  age,  not  a  flower,  not  a  shrub  even, 
not  a  leaf,  which  lovers  of  his  sweet  Hymns  of  a  Her- 
mit can  pluck  for  a  memorial.  Bonchurch  is  in  a  cleft 
of  rock,  precipices  above  and  below.  Here  between  the 
showers,  which  lasted  in  close  succession  for  nearly  two 
days,  I  managed  to  climb  the  steep  stairs  and  paths  cut  in 
the  solid  stone  and  geologize  a  little  in  the  chalk  above, 
and  obtained  for  my  pains  some  very  good  ammonites  and 
so  forth.  My  room  at  the  cheerful  inn  overlooked  the  sea 
like  a  watch-tower,  and  I  could  note  every  white-capped 
surge  that  went  chasing  the  others  over  the  green  water 
under  mists  and  low  driving  clouds,  slowly  and  wearily  all 
the  day  long ;  and  there  1  wrote  home  and  so  made  the 
rainy  time  a  delight.  At  midnight,  I  awoke  and  went  to 
the  window,  I  know  not  why  ;  the  sky  had  cleared  at  last, 
and  the  planet  of  the  morn  was  shining  large  and  still  over 
the  smoothened  water,  and  took  my  thoughts  away  across 
the  far  broader  seas  to  you  all  at  home.  The  deep  quiet 
and  the  pleasant  surprise  fixed  the  whole  scene  deeply,  and 
I  think  of  it  as  one  of  those  near  visions  we  occasionally 
get  when  barriers  of  space  and  time  seem  almost  moved 
away  out  of  our  path  by  His  tenderness  who  keeps  us  all, 
whether  apart  or  near. 

As  I  went  up  out  of  Bonchurch  next  morning  towards 
Ventnor,  I  could  not  help  being  reminded  of  the  Oriental 
Petra,  shut  as  it  is  in  a  cleft  of  rock,  and  traversed  by 
flights  of  narrow  steep  stairs  in  the  sides  thereof ;  only 
Petra  is  desolate,  and  this  is  all  alive  with  beauty  and  hu- 
man happiness.  From  the  downs  above,  the  French  coast 
was  visible.  The  great  rock  bastion  of  the  Undercliff 
stretched  its  craggy  front,  crowned  with  woods  and  culti- 
vated lands  and  grassy  slopes,  continuously  for  miles  over 
against  the  opposite  shore,  and  forced  on  us  its  fine  sym- 
bolism.    How  grand  is  England's  position  among  the  less 


68  MEMOIR. 

emancipated  nations !  May  she  stand  as  firm  and  calm  as 
these  her  rocks  in  these  political  storms.  Passing  out  from 
the  Undercliff  the  road  led  us  through  low  downs,  over 
which  we  plodded  a  somewhat  weary  way,  once  losing  the 
path  and  wandering  off  to  a  pleasant  farm-house  among  the 
hills  that  gave  us  shelter  from  a  sudden  shower,  until,  after 
looking  into  the  tiniest  church  in  England,  —  St.  Law- 
rence's, originally  only  20  feet  long  by  8  wide  and  12  high, 
—  we  reached  Niton  at  sundown,  to  be  refreshed  at  a  good 
inn,  and  hear  the  organ,  that  chanced  to  be  playing  as  we 
passed,  in  the  time-stained,  age-worn  church.  We  had  a 
pleasant  talk  with  the  organist,  a  plain  farmer's  boy,  and 
got  him  to  play  to  us.  We  found,  too,  a  hymn-book  we 
had  never  seen  (! !)  in  which  were  several  grand  new 
hymns  for  our  collection.  The  boys  in  these  villages  took 
off  their  caps  to  the  strangers  as  we  passed,  little  knowing 
what  pleasure  their  simple  good  manners  give  to  pilgrims 
in  a  strange  land. 

Next  morning  up  the  great  St.  Catherine's  Down,  the 
loftiest  of  all,  and,  oh !  what  a  glorious  breeze,  and  what 
luxuriance  of  delicate  flowers,  and  what  views  off  to  sea, 
and  what  views  down  the  valleys,  over  village  and  streamlet 
and  chine,  and  what  sweeps  upward  and  downward  of  per- 
fect green  !  I  gathered  dozens  of  varieties  of  flowers  I 
never  saw  before  from  this  noble  hill,  that  white  day  we 
walked  over  it.  We  lingered  on  the  top  breathing  the 
fresh  morning  airs,  and  looking  at  the  old  tower  set  up  on 
the  summit  by  good  Walter  de  Godeton  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  in  the  windows  of  which  he  commanded  that  a 
light  should  be  kept  burning  by  a  priest,  whose  work  it  was 
to  see  that  no  mariners  should  be  shipwrecked  on  that 
rough  coast  for  lack  of  kindly  warning.  The  sod  was  elas- 
tic under  our  feet ;  the  sheep  were  feeding  along  the  uplands ; 
the  deep  green  gorse  gave  richer  color  to  the  landscape, 
with  its  great  domes  and  clumps  scattered  all  around,  than 
any  grass  or  foliage  of  midsummer ;  timid  hares  darted  into 


MEMOIR.  69 

its  shelter  at  my  feet ;  the  steep  cliffs  and  white  crags  fronted 
the  sea  below  ;  hill-masses  and  valley-mazes  alternated  in 
light  and  shadow  far  inland ;  the  sky  was  clear  overhead. 
How  could  it  not  be  the  best  of  days,  the  very  life-spring 
of  strength  and  joy  for  us  !  That  was  the  first  shming  hour 
in  our  Isle  of  Wight  journey ;  —  the  second  you  shall  learn 
anon. 

In  the  afternoon  came  the  rain  again,  faithfully  follow- 
ing us  day  by  day.  Through  the  dull,  leaden,  dripping 
weather  we  walked,  first  over  dizzy  precipices  to  the  coast- 
guard station  at  Atherfield  Point,  where  the  Government 
keep  a  force  to  prevent  smuggling,  and  where  we  dined  at 
a  cottage  perched  like  John  o'  Groat's  house  on  the  bold 
headland,  and  then  over  breezy  moors,  among  stunted 
trees  and  furze,  till,  just  as  the  spirit  and  flesh  alike  were 
giving  out,  the  sun  sent  a  great  shaft  of  glory  through  a 
rift,  a  pretty  bridge  under  elms  and  a  pleasant  cottage  ap- 
peared, and  we  came  suddenly  amidst  delicious  bird  songs, 
that  must  have  been  from  the  throats  of  nightingales,  into 
the  street  of  a  village,  which  only  Shauklin  could  equal  in 
beauty.  The  organ  was  pealing  from  the  old  church,  as 
before  at  Niton,  and  looking  into  and  around  the  low  ven- 
erable tower,  we  saw  that  an  exquisite  taste  had  preserved 
all  that  was  precious  in  the  ancient  structure  and  brought 
in  every  modern  improvement  for  comfort  and  pious  feel- 
ings' sake  that  was  in  keeping  therewith.  A.  rectory,  ab- 
solutely buried  in  flowers  and  elms,  nestled  close  by.  It 
was  the  home,  two  centuries  ago,  of  Bishop  Ken,  the 
author  of  the  beautiful  hymns,  "  Glory  to  thee,  my  God, 
this  night,"  and  "  Awake  my  soul  and  with  the  sun." 
Exiled  from  his  bishopric  of  Winchester,  he  retired  to  this 
secluded  parish  of  Brightstone,  and  devoted  himself  to  the 
care  of  the  rustic  community,  till  recalled  to  his  larger 
sphere,  leaving  to  the  spot  the  undying  fragrance  of  a 
"  sweet  and  virtuous  soul."  Here,  too,  Wilberforce  spent 
his  closing  years,  and  so  the  glory  of  the  great  emancipation 


70  MEMOIR. 

rests  also  upon  this  little  nook.  Our  inn  here  was  a  per- 
fect idyl.  It  opened  by  a  casement  upon  a  pretty  garden, 
seen  through  woodbine  tracery,  and  a  side  wall  covered 
with  a  prairie  rose,  white  with  blooms,  and  then  past  these 
a  row  of  elms  and  deep  foliage.  In  the  evening  we 
heard  the  young  men  in  the  yard,  who  had  been  busy  at 
skittles,  singing  "  Annie  Laurie,"  and  other  simple  bal- 
lads, and  in  the  morning  took  breakfast  in  a  garden  bower. 
That  morning  opened  the  second  white  day.  First,  we 
sketched  the  old  church,  and  it  was  fortunate  we  did  so,  as 
no  picture  of  it  was  to  be  obtained  afterwards.  Hearing 
the  sound  of  little  voices,  I  followed  them,  and  came  upon 
a  picturesque  school-house,  built  in  old  Gothic  style,  with 
thatched  porches,  where  the  children  were  singing  a  morn- 
ing hymn.  Under  the  elms  and  in  the  village  quiet,  there 
was  something  very  touching  in  the  sound  of  the  well- 
trained  voices  of  these  hundred  little  boys  and  girls.  Long- 
fellow had  meantime  gone  in  before  I  arrived,  and  seen 
the  teacher  and  listened  to  some  of  the  exercises,  and  came 
away  greatly  pleased  with  the  whole.  Next  up  the  height 
to  the  Motestone,  sl  great  upright  rock,  upon  a  summit 
commanding  a  view  over  the  interior  of  the  island,  where 
the  Saxons  used  to  hold  their  gemote,  or  public  meetings,  to 
deliberate  on  peace  and  war,  murmuring  dissent  or  clashing 
their  shields  in  token  of  approval.  Around  this  old  stone 
grew  up  the  germs  of  English  Parliament  and  New  Eng- 
land town  meeting.  We  followed  along  the  ridge  of  the 
down,  went  below  to  the  shore  at  Brook  to  see  the  fossil 
forest  of  lignite  trunks,  failing  therein  by  reason  of  the 
height  of  the  tide,  then  up  again  through  Compton  Chine 
across  Afton  Down  to  Freshwater  Bay,  a  few  houses  under 
a  noble  chalk  cliff,  where  a  fortress  stands  on  the  very  ex- 
treme verge  of  the  island  southwestward,  and  the  cannon 
of  England  are  pointed  across  the  Channel.  But  it  was 
something  more  than  cliffs  or  fortress  or  beautiful  bay  that 
made  our  hearts  leap  at  the  sight  of  the  spot.     Just  behind 


MEMOIR.  71 

it,  in  the  woody  recess,  is  Faringford  Manor,  the  house  of 
Tennyson.  Here  the  shy  poet  laureate  has  withdrawn  to 
the  very  verge  of  human  society  to  study  and  dream  and 
write  his  magnificent  poems. 

"  Where,  far  from  noise  and  smoke  of  town, 
I  watch  the  twilight  falling  brown 

AIL  round  a  careless-order'd  garden 
Close  to  the  ridge  of  a  noble  down. 

"  For  groves  of  pine  on  either  hand, 
To  break  the  blast  of  winter,  stand  ; 

And  further  on,  the  hoary  Channel 
Tumbles  a  breaker  on  chalk  and  sand." 

Read  this  invitation  of  his  to  Maurice  to  come  and  visit 
him.  It  will  give  you  a  perfect  idea  of  the  seclusion  of 
the  place.  He  sees  very  few  people  ;  and  though,  as  a 
chatty  old  man  who  lives  close  by  told  us,  a  great  many 
people  come  to  look  at  him,  very  few  of  them  can  catch  a 
sight  of  the  hermit.  Of  course  we  tried  our  luck  in  that 
way,  being  both  of  us  as  devout  admirers,  probably,  of 
the  In  Memoriam  and  Idyls  of  the  King,  as  could  be 
discovered  anywhere.  We  walked  through  the  deep  pine 
groves  ("  careless-order'd  "  they  were  indeed),  only  catch- 
ing a  glimpse  of  the  old  house  through  a  dim  opening, 
high  walls  and  thickets  hiding  it  on  every  side.  I  was  just 
attempting  to  sketch  the  roof  and  a  window  or  two,  that 
rose  above  the  trees  from  near  the  end  of  the  narrow  dark 
lane  by  which  the  nearest  approach  is  to  be  gained,  when 
voices  sounded  close  by.  Intruders  as  we  were,  we  felt  a 
little  ashamed,  in  all  our  longing  to  see  him,  at  being 
caught  in  this  apparently  private  lane,  and  hardly  dared 
look  up  as  two  men  passed  by.  The  glance  of  an  instant 
told  me  that  one  of  them  was  he  :  above  the  middle  size, 
with  rather  round  shoulders  and  a  little  stoop,  a  large  nose, 
full  and  peaked  beard,  old,  low,  broad-brimmed  black  felt 
hat  slouched  over  his  face,  long,  thin,  dark  features,  and 
spectacles.     He  looked  up  as  he  passed  us  in  a  sort  of  half 


72  MEMOIR. 

surprise,  as  it  seemed  very  natural,  at  the  sight  of  two 
brown-linen,  bloused  interlopers  in  His  lane,  in  a  manner 
that  a  little  reminded  me  of  Freeman  Clarke,  and  instantly 
withdrew  his  eyes  to  the  ground.  He  was  in  conversation 
with  a  common-looking  person,  and  we  heard  a  few  words 
about  some  business  matter  or  other.  He  passed  by,  and 
of  course  we  had  then  nothing  to  do  but  betake  ourselves 
out  of  the  lane,  and  go  home  again  in  our  great  content.  So 
we  followed  them  down  the  shady  lane  towards  the  gate, 
supposing  they  would  go  out.  But  lo !  they  stopped,  and, 
with  hand  upon  the  gate,  he  was  just  taking  leave  of  his 
companion  as  we  approached.  The  poor  trespassers  were 
caught  indeed,  and  for  a  minute  dared  not  go  forward ;  they 
must  actually  be  shown  out  of  his  grounds  by  the  poet  him- 
self !  But  there  was  nothing  for  them  but  to  brave  it 
out;  so  they  hurried  by  him,  just  stealing  another  instant's 
look  and  hearing  him  say  last  words  to  his  visitor.  That 
was  the  second  golden  hour  of  the  Isle  of  Wight  journey. 
...  At  Newport  on  Sunday  evening  we  heard  part  of  a 
noble  sermon  which  much  refreshed  us,  especially  as  com- 
ing from  a  Church  of  England  clergyman,  my  own  ex- 
perience, as  well  as  L.'s,  having  been  without  exception 
unpleasant  in  that  direction,  as  respects  preachers  and 
preaching.  .  .  .  All  I  have  learned  about  America,  in 
Swiss  or  English  papers,  is  that  Heenan  has  arrived,  that 
the  Great  Eastern  is  to  sail  in  a  week,  and  that  Betty 
Barlow  has  run  away  from  her  husband !  This  last  in  a 
Swiss  daily. 


MEMOIR.  73 


TO    HIS    SISTER   K. 

Nice,  November  26,  1860. 
"  Kennst  du  das  Land  wo  die  Citronen  bliihii, 
Im  dimkeln  Laub  die  Gold-Orangen  giiihn, 
Ein  sanfter  Wind  vom  blauen  Himmel  weht, 
Die  Myrte  still  und  hoch  der  Lorbeer  stebt  1 " 

Here  in  these  latter  days  of  November  I  walk  amid 
roses  and  hear  the  song  of  birds.  Gold  oranges  actually 
glimmer  through  dark  foliage,  and  soft  winds  blow  shore- 
wards  from  the  blue  Mediterranean  up  the  conch-like 
sweep  of  this  beautiful  bay.  The  peasants  are  shaking  the 
ripe  fruit  from  the  olive  groves  that  cover  the  hills  and 
nestle  in  the  plashing  coves.  Agaves  lift  their  tall  candela- 
bra full  of  ripened  seeds,  and  cactus  blooms  are  shooting 
from  uncouth  stems;  and  we  go  up  the  winding  avenue 
between  stately  cypress-glooms  and  among  the  bristling 
spears  of  palms  to  the  noble  terrace  of  what  was  once  the 
Castle  of  Nice,  and  look  over  the  round  basin  of  groves 
and  gardens  and  white  villas  stretching  out  to  a  circling 
band  of  bare,  pointed  hills,  which  protect  the  little  city  from 
the  winds  of  the  Maritime  Alps.  ...  I  don't  believe  that 
any  sky  can  surpass  in  softness  and  mystery  that  which  I 
saw  last  Sunday  afternoon  from  the  Roman  ruins  of  Cimiez 
above  the  city.  It  was  pure  pellucid  space.  It  was  almost 
spiritual  in  its  transparency ;  pure  color  without  substance ; 
pure  presence  without  place ;  it  is  impossible  to  find  words 
that  will  describe  it.  The  sunny  clouds  lay  in  it  like  soft 
shadows  from  some  far-off  forms,  immaterial  and  intangible 
as  space  itself.  I  have  often  said  that  I  did  not  believe  the 
Italian  sky  could  ever  be  softer  and  purer  than  that  of  some 
of  our  midsummer  days  ;  but  I  think  I  shall  have  to  take  it 
back,  after  last  Sunday's  vision.  .  .  .  The  broken  arches 
and  stone  seats  [of  Cimiez]  are  sufficiently  preserved  to 
give  a  full  idea  of  the  great  amphitheatre,  built  for  public 
games,  gladiatorial  and  other.     Tall  cane-grass  rustles,  and 


74  MEMOIR. 

melancholy  olives  spread  their  straggling  houghs  and  starved 
foliage  over  and  around  the  deep  arches  that  once  echoed 
with  the  wars  and  cries  of  maddened  combatants  and  the 
plaudits  of  a  savage  multitude  at  the  cruel  sport.  Ameri- 
can slavery  will  leave  behind  no  such  indestructible  monu- 
ment of  its  cruelties  to  warn  future  generations.  It  has 
in  it  no  such  element  —  I  had  almost  said  of  dignity  —  as 
Roman  barbarism  had.  It  builds  no  grand  piles  to  testify 
of  confidence  in  itself  and  in  the  future.  It  is  the  creature 
of  the  selfish  and  sensual  desires  of  the  moment.  Those 
old  Romans  were  builders,  on  a  gigantic  scale  ;  it  is  only  a 
destroyer ;  its  very  production  curses  the  soil.  The  Ro- 
mans left  literature,  codes  of  law,  magnificent  roads,  enor- 
mous structures  ;  it  will  live  in  history  only  to  make  men 
wonder  that  a  thing  so  mean  and  cowardly  could  have  been 
endured  a  day.  It  is  worth  while  to  think  of  these  differ- 
ences just  now,  when  the  signs  of  its  destruction  seem  to 
be  looming  up  fast.  We  have  just  read  in  the  English 
papers  the  account  of  the  elections  in  America.  Of  course 
we  are  overjoyed  at  the  result  [the  election  of  Abraham 
Lincoln],  and  thought  of  illuminating  our  little  upper  cham- 
ber. Perhaps  it  would  be  wise  to  wait  and  see  what  the 
victors  mean  to  do.  But  whatever  they  mean  to  do,  the 
victory  has  a  value  beyond  their  purpose  and  their  doings. 
I  see  that  South  Carolina  threatens  to  secede.  I  hope  she 
wdll  be  permitted  and  even  urged  so  to  do.  Nothing  could 
do  so  much  toward  transferring  the  agitation  where  it  will 
have  to  come  soon,  —  into  the  heart  of  slavedom.  The 
year  that  sees  secession  sees  slavery  abolished.  .  .  . 

I  am  glad  that  you  have  read  and  enjoyed  Sartor  Resar- 
tus.  It  is  full  of  earnestness  and  power  ;  and  in  its  quaint 
way  describes  experiences  and  phases  of  spiritual  growth 
in  which  all  thinking  persons  will  recognize  much  of  their 
own  life.  And  what  a  noble  book  Fichte's  Destination  of 
Man  is,  putting  the  grand  truths  we  have  the  deepest  need 
to  believe  upon  necessary  foundations  ! 


MEMOIR.  75 

Florence,  February  20,  1861. 
I  have  been  reading  Dante  in  the  Italian  ;  of  course,  in 
Florence,  that  is  the  one  thing  that  must  be  done.  I  grew 
wearied,  however,  and  the  last  part,  the  Paradiso,  was 
skimmed  over.  It  is  too  abstractly  theological  to  inter- 
est one  much,  except  as  the  expression  of  Dante's  own  life. 
The  Inferno  is  much  more  vigorous,  and  shows  what  a 
terrible  reality  the  old  Catholic  hell  was  to  the  men  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  and  how  they  carried  their  political 
hates  and  loves  into  their  thoughts  of  the  invisible  world. 
You  know  how  much  I  always  disliked  Italian ;  I  am  now 
making  the  best  of  my  enforced  exile  by  trying  to  learn 
it,  and  can  read  it,  on  the  whole,  pretty  well.  But  I  quite 
despair  of  getting  at  the  power  of  conversing  in  it.  There 
are  so  many  queer  exclamations  and  quirky  terms  in  it,  and 
so  much  is  done  in  the  way  of  conveying  meaning  by  ges- 
ture. Shaking  the  fingers  in  each  other's  faces  is  the  ordi- 
nary mode  of  enforcing  opinion  among  .the  Italians.  The 
French  gesticulate  a  good  deal,  but  they  are  lambs  to  these 
creatures  of  passion.  But  you  would  love  to  see  the  coun- 
try people  about  Florence.  They  are  very  different  from 
the  dried-up  city  folk.  The  women  and  children  are  so 
fresh,  ruddy,  and  beautiful,  with  soft  dark  eyes  and  pleas- 
ant faces,  have  so  much  feeling  and  so  much  grace,  that 
one  does  not  wonder  that  this  is  a  land  of  artists.  Some- 
times it  seems  as  if  every  one  you  meet  might  have  sat  for 
a  Madonna  or  Child,  to  one  pi  those  old  painters  whose 
works  hang  in  the  Ufiizii  or  the  Pitti  galleries.  The  color 
of  Andrea  del  Sarto's  and  Raphael's  faces  does  not  compare 
for  beauty  with  this  country  bloom.  It  is  strange,  since 
this  people  live  in  damp  houses  down  in  the  meadows,  with 
brick  or  stone  floors,  below  the  surface  of  the  ground  often, 
and  the  exhalations  which  rise  from  the  soil  after  sunset 
are  pernicious,  at  least  to  a  stranger.  Then  they  eat  very 
little  meat,  and  their  wine  has  been  for  some  years  past  in- 
ferior, and  the  grape  harvest  very  small.     The  groups  sit- 


76  MEMOIR. 

ting  at  the  doors  along  the  wayside,  at  work,  their  busy- 
fingers  plying  the  little  plaits  of  straw  as  swiftly  as  those 
of  a  practiced  knitter  fly,  the  clean  yellow  bundles  of  the 
straw  glowing  beside  them,  with  light  plumes  in  the  sun, 
their  pleasant  songs  mingling  with  the  melting,  summer-like 
atmosphere,  while  the  whole  picture  lies  bright  in  the  set- 
ting of  the  far  blue  misty  hills  and  the  snow  mountains 
peering  above  them,  are  altogether  as  perfectly  idyllic 
as  can  be  conceived.  Only  to  think  that  this  is  the  Tuscan 
February  !  Theodore  Parker's  grave  is  in  sight  of  all  this 
divine  beauty  of  the  Val  d'Arno.  The  little  Swiss  ceme- 
tery stands  just  outside  the  Pinti  gate,  its  paths  set  with 
tall  cypresses,  and  its  soft  slope  gently  inclined  from  the 
city  wall,  which  is  clothed  with  ivy,  towards  the  mountains. 
Green  Fiesole  is  in  view,  with  its  double  summit,  and  the 
tall  tower  of  its  old  church  between,  and  the  undulating 
hills,  deepening,  as  they  recede,  from  amber  and  warm  gray 
into  blue,  and  th^n  into  that  mystery  of  color,  for  which 
there  is  no  name ;  and  beyond,  the  Apennines,  with  their 
grand  white  crowns,  ever  softened  in  winter  as  in  summer 
by  the  tender  haze,  that  so  steadfastly  abides,  brooding 
like  a  heavenly  presence,  over  the  Val  d'Arno,  and  mak- 
ing those  stern  snows  and  their  ideal  purity  preachers  of 
the  Infinite  Love.  The  cemetery  is  small  and  rather 
crowded,  but  nothing  could  be  more  simple  and  serene, 
more  free  from  every  form  of  pride  or  vain  show.  The 
noble  brain  and  heart  that  worked  so  faithfully  and  fear- 
lessly to  the  last,  that  were,  in  fact,  the  widest  passage 
opened  in  all  this  century  for  theological  and  moral  truth, 
and  practical  liberty  and  justice,  to  the  popular  conscience, 
rest  in  the  shadow  of  a  plain  gray  stone,  marked  with  his 
name,  and  with  the  place  and  date  of  his  birth  and  of  his 
death.  A  few  violets  and  periwinkles  are  growing  from 
the  earth  above  them.  We  shall  plant  a  vine  of  this  brave, 
warm  Tuscan  ivy  beside  the  stone.  My  thoughts  of  him 
would  not  stay  by  the  grave.     The  voice  is  silent  that  is 


MEMOIR.  T7 

SO  Deeded  now,  and  the  eyes  that  saw  in  vision,  for  so  many 
years,  the  coming  on  of  these  days  of  the  final  conflict  with 
slavery  were  closed  forever  at  the  moment  of  their  dawn- 
ing. But  I  felt  more  than  ever  how  truly  he  must  be  liv- 
ing now  in  the  midst  of  the  scenes  he  identified  with  his 
being  and  charged  with  his  own  proper  life.  The  body, 
worn  out  at  last  with  toils  for  God  and  man  that  knew  no 
respite,  fell  by  this  quiet  wayside,  far  from  the  great  battle, 
and  fitly  rests  where  this  Italian  people  are  achieving  polit- 
ical and  civil  freedom,  by  peaceful  revolution,  and  calling 
back  their  ancient  genius  for  literature  and  arts.  The 
spirit,  that  could  not  faint  nor  be  weary,  remains  with  us. 
And  no  one  now  living  is  competent  to  measure  its  work. 

One  thing  has  disappointed  us  in  Italy :  we  have  heard 
but  little  fine  music,  and  seen  but  little  fine  acting.  The 
best  operas  do  not  seem  to  be  performed  with  success. 
I  am  quite  sure  that  Germany  is  more  interesting  to 
one  who  enjoys  music  than  this  land  of  musical  compos- 
ers. I  have  a  desire  to  hear  the  German  music  in  Ger- 
many. Though  I  find  so  much  to  enjoy  in  the  scenery 
of  Italy,  the  Cornice  road,  the  Apennines,  and  the  Val 
d'Arno,  yet  I  look  back  to  the  Swiss  mountains  with 
longing,  as  I  always  have  done  since  I  saw  them  first. 
There  is  no  beauty  elsewhere  like  that  of  those  green 
alps,  and  those  white  glaciers,  and  those  tall  peaks  and 
battlements  above  the  clouds.  The  richness  of  the  woods 
helps  much  in  the  Swiss  scenery.  In  Italy  this  element 
is  almost  wanting.  The  limestone  is  generally  very  bare 
(I  am  speaking  now  of  the  northwestern  and  central 
parts  of  Italy),  and  the  sombre,  dull  olive  is  not  pleasant 
to  look  on.  The  plains  of  Lombardy,  indeed,  are  extremely 
rich,  yielding  three  harvests  a  year,  and  splendidly  irri- 
gated ;  but  great  plains,  however  fertile,  have  not  the  charm 
of  mountain  scenery,  of  course.  The  really  delicious  thing 
in  Italy  is  the  atmosphere.  Its  colors  clothe  the  bare  rock 
with  astonishing  beauty.     I  never  saw  distant  mountains 


78  MEMOIR. 

so  ethereal,  nor  clouds  so  penetrated  and  melting  in  pure 
light.  And  the  intensity  of  the  sunbeams  of  a  clear  day, 
even  in  January,  is  such  as  to  change  the  natural  colors  of 
objects  into  an  Illumination  one  could  hardly  have  thought 
them  capable  of.  The  stone  pine  is  a  grand  figure  in  these 
worlds  of  light.  Its  massive,  straight  trunk,  bare  far  up 
into  the  atmosphere  above  all  other  trees,  the  broad  tuft 
that  suddenly  starts  out  of  it,  and  forms  a  great  dome  of 
darkest  green,  turning  almost  to  black  in  the  distance  by 
contrast,  boldly  stands  out  against  the  sky  on  the  hill-tops 
or  on  the  low  plains.  One  thinks  of  the  Bible  description, 
"  trees  of  God,  planted  by  rivers  of  water,  whose  leaf  shall 
not  wither." 

TO    HIS    SISTER    A. 

Florence,  April  10,  1861. 
I  should  like  to  give  you  some  idea  of  the  Art  of  Flor- 
ence, which  I  have  had  a  good  opportunity  this  winter  to 
study  pretty  satisfactorily.  I  should  like  to  tell  you  of  the 
ages  of  Florentine  architecture  ;  of  the  grand  simplicity 
of  these  massive  palaces ;  of  the  beautiful  round-arched 
cornices  that  gird  them  about ;  of  the  imposing  Palazzo 
Vecchio  Tower,  stately  and  fair,  that  overhangs  the  wall 
beneath  it  at  least  six  feet ;  of  the  charming  double  win- 
dows, with  Gothic  arches  and  cusps  ;  of  that  *'  mount  of 
marble,"  the  Duomo,  so  rich  and  elaborate  without,  so 
sombre  and  simple  and  sublime  within  ;  of  Giotto's  soaring 
Campanile,  with  its  fine  marble  mosaic,  its  twisted  shafts, 
its  gladness,  and  its  grace ;  of  Ghiberti's  wonderful  bronze 
doors,  that  Michael  Angelo  called  the  "  Gates  of  Paradise^^ 
and  their  borders  of  flowers  and  animals,  where  the  birds 
hover  and  brood  and  peck,  and  the  owl  hoots,  and  the  snail 
crawls,  and  the  squirrel  listens  and  chirps  and  cracks  his 
nut,  and  the  grasses  wave,  and  the  roses  open  to  the  dew. 
Such  vitality  in  carving  I  think  was  never  seen.  And  I 
should  like  to  describe  to  you,  if  it  were  possible,  which  it 
is  not,  some  of  the  pictures,  the  select  of  all  the  world, 


MEMOIR.  79 

gathered  into  the  Uffizii  and  Pitti  galleries,  the  churches 
aud  the  cloisters  ;  to  show  you  Angelico's  angels,  with  their 
radiant  faces,  their  uplifted  trumpets,  their  feet  hastening, 
"beautiful  on  the  mountains,"  to  greet  their  Lord;  and 
Perugino's  tender  faces,  dissolved  in  sorrow  over  the  Christ 
laid  in  loving  arms  beneath  the  cross ;  and  Andrea  del 
Sarto's  beautiful  children  and  manly  youths  and  genuine 
human  prophets  and  saints,  his  harmonies  of  composition, 
and  his  colors,  surpassed,  it  seems  to  me,  by  none  but 
Titian,  if  equaled  by  any  other.  His  Madonna  del 
Sacco  is,  of  all  the  "  Holy  Families  "  the  art  of  the  church 
has  produced,  the  most  truly  that  with  which  this  age  of 
ages  can  sympathize:  Joseph,  reclining  on  a  sack,  is 
reading  aloud,  while  the  mother  looks  forward,  rapt  in 
attention,  and  half  unconsciously  puts  out  her  arm  to  check 
the  child,  who  in  the  eagerness  of  his  delight,  as  at  a 
pretty  plaything,  stretches  out  his  hand  to  grasp  the  Book. 
It  is  a  real  family  scene,  with  nothing  supernatural  or  pre- 
ternatural about  it ;  husband  and  wife  devoutly  reading  in 
their  plain  home  at  evening,  with  their  beautiful,  ruddy, 
boy-like  boy  at  their  knees.  And  such  an  atmosphere  of 
holy  repose  and  love  brooding  over  the  scene  !  There  is 
but  one  "  Holy  Family  "  I  know  of  that  seems  to  me 
greater,  and  that  in  only  one  portion.  I  mean  Raphael's 
Madonna  delta  Seggiola  at  the  Pitti.  The  eyes  of  that  in- 
spired child  look  through  and  through  the  world,  beholding 
something  beyond  —  what  it  is  who  can  tell?  — which  illu- 
mines them  with  a  splendor  and  a  joy  which  I  never  beheld 
in  any  other  work  of  a  human  artist.  It  is  one  of  those 
inspirations  which  no  copy,  however  accurate,  can  convey. 
There  is  not  one  of  the  many  copies  of  the  Seggiola  which 
gives  any  idea  of  it ;  and  yet  they  are  as  well  done  as  any 
of  the  copies  of  the  great  masters  in  every  other  respect. 
In  general,  I  don't  think  I  admire  Raphael  so  much  as  I 
did,  and  so  much  as  most  do.  I  greatly  prefer  the  coloring 
of  Andrea  del    Sarto,   and   the  drawing   of   many    other 


80  MEMOIR. 

painters.  And  m  feeling,  Perugino  and  Andrea  and  some- 
times Correggio  grow  upon  me,  in  comparison  with  him. 
And  last,  I  must  not  forget  Titian's  splendid  Flora,  an  in- 
carnate sunbeam,  turning  all  other  pictures  in  the  Venetian 
room  into  pale  ghosts  beside  her,  and  his  grave,  calm, 
severe  portraits  that  make  the  present  generations  of  men 
look  tame  and  trifling.  And  then  the  statues  of  Michael 
Angelo,  the  great  intellectual  conceptions  seeming  to  weigh 
down  the  marble  and  break  away  from  it  and  hover  over 
it  like  an  atmosphere !  An  infinite  sorrow  transfuses 
the  Pieta  in  the  shadow  of  the  high  altar  in  the  Duomo, 
where  the  mother's  cheek  supports  the  falling  head,  in 
a  silent  woe  that  seems  like  eternal  rest.  The  limbs,  re- 
laxed in  death,  slide  earthward,  as  if  they  said,  "  It  is  fin- 
ished," and  an  aged  person,  all  grief  and  compassion  and 
tender  love,  bends  over  them,  and  folds  them  to  his  heart. 
It  is  thought  to  be  Joseph  of  Arimathea.  The  work  is  un- 
finished, like  most  of  Michael  Angelo's  best  things.  Marble 
seemed  to  give  way  under  him,  and  he  left  his  conceptions 
only  half  sketched  in  it.  In  this  case,  however,  the  block 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  sufficiently  large.  Of  the 
Night  and  Morning  you  have  seen  copies  ;  and  of  the  other 
statue  or  group  resembling  it,  in  the  same  chapel  of  San 
Lorenzo,  almost  equally  grand,  which  seems  to  me  to  be  his 
lament  over  the  ruin  of  Florence,  the  treachery  of  her 
children,  and  the  death  of  her  liberty,  I  think  I  have 
written  already.  But  of  all  these  things  how  feeble  an 
idea  any  description  would  give !  Painting  and  sculpture 
cannot  be  described.  One  wants,  at  least,  photographs  to 
help  out  the  words.  I  shall  bring  home  some,  and  then 
shall  try  to  make  you  in  some  degree  sharers  in  my 
pleasure. 


MEMOIR.  81 

TO   HIS    SISTER  K. 

Eagatz,  Switzerland,  May  9,  1861. 

When  I  wrote  you  last  I  was  in  the  sunny  Val  d'Arno, 
luxuriating  in  the  splendor  of  the  Tuscan  Campagna  and 
the  wealth  of  Italian  art.  Now  behold  me,  if  the  sudden 
transition  does  not  take  away  your  breath,  far  up  among 
the  Alpine  heights  again,  with  snowy  peaks  above  me  and 
streams  rushing  through  blossoming  meadows  below  me. 
Yes,  back  in  my  dear  old  Switzerland,  for  which  I  have  felt 
the  "  Heimweh  "  all  winter ;  back  for  a  few  days  to  breathe 
the  mountain  air,  and  see  the  simple,  happy,  cordial  moun- 
tain people  once  more.  A  week  ago  I  was  in  the  vast 
Lombard  plain,  which  stretches  across  Northern  Italy  un- 
der the  shadows  of  the  Alps,  one  uninterrupted  level  of 
such  fertility  and  culture  combined  as  probably  does  not 
exist  elsewhere.  I  was  standing  on  the  very  top  of  the 
spire  of  Milan  Cathedral ;  above  the  hundred  white  statues 
on  their  slender  pinnacles ;  above  the  delicate  maze  of  flying 
buttresses,  that  seem  buoyed  up  in  their  pure,  fine  tracery 
in  mid-heaven ;  above  the  "  mount  of  marble,"  and  "  the 
height,  the  space,  the  gloom,  the  glory  "  within ;  above  the 
beautiful  city  ;  above  the  refulgent  plain.  And  it  seemed 
that  one  perpetual  summer  glory  must  forever  rest  upon 
the  whole  world. 

The  mountains  were  veiled,  and  I  seemed  to  look  on  the 
rim  of  the  earth  on  every  side,  and  could  see  nothing  but 
verdure  and  sunlight.  Three  days,  and  I  was  amidst  the 
snows  of  Spliigen  Pass,  —  cut  through  eight  feet  deep  for 
the  passage  of  the  diligences,  —  and  then  dashing  in  an 
open  sledge  over  the  long  summit  of  the  mountain  for  an 
hour  and  a  half  against  driving  snow,  through  piercing 
wind,  beside  precipices  of  enormous  depth.  The  first  part 
of  the  ascent  had  been  charming.  I  had  come  up  the 
Lake  of  Como,  a  kind  of  Lake  George,  only  under  higher 
mountains  and  with  more  richly  cultivated  shores,  to  Col- 
6 


82  MEMOIR. 

ico ;  then  had  taken  a  voiture  with  a  Milanese  and  an  Irish 
gentleman  to  Chiavenna  which  we  reached  late  at  night. 
Then,  after  a  drowse  of  two  hours  between  a  cotton  coverlid 
and  a  cotton  mattress,  coming  out  of  it,  as  you  may  suppose, 
more  dead  than  alive,  at  one  o'clock,  and  getting  into  one 
of  the  four  large  voitures  (an  extraordinary  number  for  the 
season),  I  commenced  the  ascent  in  pitchy  darkness.  As 
soon  as  it  was  light  we  all  dismounted,  preparing  to  climb 
the  "short  cuts  "  rather  than  creep  up  the  zigzags  in  the  dili- 
gence. So  up  we  went  to  an  enormous  height,  from  which 
we  could  look  straight  down  into  the  far  dwindled  valley 
and  up  along  the  reaches  of  magnificent  snow-covered  pla- 
teaus beyond  it.  The  brown,  huddled  villages,  dotting  the 
hollow,  seemed  saved  as  by  miracle.  From  this  elevation 
I  could  see  how  small  a  bit  splitting  off  from  the  huge 
mountain  side  would  suffice  to  bury  them  or  sweep  them 
all  away  in  an  hour.  Yet  there  they  rest  secure  and 
peaceful,  trusting  Nature's  great  quiet  laws  ;  the  well-tilled 
fields  or  clean  meadows  just  tinged  with  spring-green  con- 
trasting with  the  stern  rocks  and  snows  and  mists  above. 
There  were  long  galleries  cut  in  the  rock-face,  pierced  with 
round  arches  through  which  I  could  look  off  to  the  moun- 
tain tops  without  seeing  the  valley ;  and  most  beautiful 
ice  stalactites  hung  from  openings  in  these,  great  frozen 
streams,  transparent  as  glass  and  drawn  out  into  exquisite 
shapes.  Over  a  sort  of  stone  balcony,  made  on  the  verge 
of  a  precipice  for  the  purpose,  I  looked  down  upon  a  water- 
fall descending  in  one  steep  plunge  along  the  rock-face 
to  the  bottom  of  the  valley,  I  think,  the  ethereal  pearly 
paleness  of  which  was  wonderful  to  see.  But  now  come 
sterner  realities.  It  soon  became  too  cold  to  walk  com- 
fortably, and  we  betook  ourselves  to  the  voitures.  After 
passing  between  masses  of  snow  eight  feet  high,  cleared 
by  the  mountaineers,  we  were  informed  that  we  must 
leave  our  comfortable  seats  and  cross  the  Pass  in  open 
sledges ;    comfortless   things    enough,  and   powdered  with 


MEMOIR.  83 

the  snow  which  had  already  drifted  into  them  this  very- 
day.  It  was  as  cold  as  one  of  our  severest  December 
days  on  the  Andover  hills.  The  whole  prospect  around 
was  one  sheet  of  snow,  here  sweeping  down  into  deep  val- 
leys on  the  mountain  top,  here  rising  into  rolling  hills, 
there  mouutino^  into  the  mists  that  hunsj  round  the  hiojher 
peaks  of  the  Soretto  and  the  Schreckhorn.  We  were  two 
in  each  sledge,  the  driver  outside  and  behind.  The  horse, 
though  a  rough  looking  old  fellow,  went  at  a  swift  pace 
through  the  drifted  and  deep  snow.  Here  and  there  a  des- 
olate stone  house,  with  long  lines  of  windows,  appeared 
dimly  through  the  sleety  atmosphere,  and  the  wind  drove 
the  sharp  icy  snow  in  our  faces,  and  penetrated  to  our  very 
bones.  I  had  expected  the  sledges,  but  not  such  a  storm, 
and  was  neither  sufficiently  clad  nor  able  to  bring  my 
clothes  well  around  my  head  and  limbs.  I  think  I  never 
came  so  near  freezing  in  my  life.  It  was  beginning  to  look 
serious  when  we  drove  into  the  Dogana  (custom-house) 
shed.  Never  was  a  Dogana  so  welcome.  I  have  often 
denounced  the  institution  as  a  nuisance,  and  wished  it  cast 
into  some  bottomless  pit,  never  to  be  heard  of  again.  But 
I  was  ready  at  that  moment  to  bless  the  man  that  invented 
it.  A  warm  room  and  a  soap-stone  stove  to  restore  the 
benumbed  face  and  hands !  But  what  was  our  horror  at 
hearing  that  we  had  yet  more  than  an  hour's  sledgiug  be- 
fore us.  It  seemed  like  braving  the  impossible,  but  there 
was  no  escape.  So  I  tied  my  cap  over  my  ears  with  my 
handkerchief,  gathered  my  garments  well  about  me,  and, 
after  an  ineffectual  attempt  to  get  a  cup  of  coffee  and  a  bit 
of  bread,  took  my  place  in  the  sledge.  On  we  went  along 
a  path  scarce  visible  on  the  edge  of  precipices,  the  reins, 
for  the  most  part,  loose  on  the  horse's  neck,  the  driver 
now  and  then  gathering  them  up  to.  turn  him  out  of 
danger  ;  on,  dashing  up  and  down,  right  and  left,  my  com- 
panion, blind  behind  a  huge  bearskin  hood,  in  perpetual 
dread  lest  we  should  go  over  precipices,  the  wild  way  fly- 


84  MEMOIR. 

iug  beneath  our  sure-footed  old  racer.  .  .  .  Suddenly  the 
horse  turned  his  head  downward,  and  then  began  such 
a  downhill  dash  as  you  never  saw  nor  conceived  of.  It 
seemed  like  going  down  the  face  of  a  wall.  There  was 
the  vast  gorge  right  under  us,  and  we  were  at  full  speed. 
No  zigzag,  no  tack,  one  direct  steep,  not  hanging  over  the 
abyss,  but  flying  down  it  on  slippery  snow.  To  this  mo- 
ment, I  know  not  what  kept  us  from  rolling  headlong. 
Every  law  of  falling  bodies,  every  experience  of  sliding 
down  steep  hills,  seemed  to  me  decisive  against  the  possi- 
bility of  our  getting  safely  to  the  bottom.  Providence 
always  works  by  natural  causes,  and  I  can  only  say,  our 
horse  was  worthy  to  be  canonized  beside  the  horses  of  the 
Parthenon  and  St.  Mark's.  In  spite  of  the  danger,  I  found 
myself  exhilarated  by  the  performance.  The  driver  cried 
out  from  behind  "  Va  bene  !  "  "  Benissimo !  "  I  shouted.  .  .  . 

You  may  judge  that  the  dinner  at  Spliigen  was  welcome ; 
a  nice,  neat  Swiss  inn,  too,  with  wooden  floors  and  clean 
white  aspect  generally.  The  damp  old  fortress-like  stone 
alhergos  of  Italy  were  beyond  the  snows.  So  passed  we  the 
"  snowy  Spliigen  "  on  that  ever-to-be-remembered  Sunday, 
the  5th  of  May,  1861.  .  .  . 

One  thing  more  ;  I  must  just  mention  it  without  details. 
I  have  been  to  the  Vaudois  valleys,  —  the  valleys  of  the 
"  hunted  heroes  of  the  Protestant  faith "  of  old.  You 
must  have  read  of  them,  the  Waldenses,  whom  the  dra- 
goons of  Louis  XIV.,  nearly  two  hundred  years  ago,  shot 
down  in  their  mountain  homes  and  along  the  quiet  glens, 
for  refusing  to  accept  the  Catholic  religion,  which  their 
fathers  for  generations  had  held  to  be  against  the  simplicity 
of  the  primitive  faith.  You  have  read  of  this  little  com- 
munity, which  preserved  the  liberty  to  read  the  Bible  and 
to  govern  themselv.es  by  ministers  of  their  own  choice,  from 
the  earliest  times,  in  the  Piedmontese  mountains  on  the  bor- 
ders of  Italy  and  France  ;  of  their  persecutions,  age  after 
age  ;  of  the  exile  of  Henry  Arnoud  and  his  four  thousand 


MEMOIR.  85 

men,  women,  and  children,  driven  at  the  point  of  the  bayo- 
net over  the  Alps  into  Switzerland,  and  their  heroic  return 
to  their  native  valleys  ;  of  the  brave  resistance  which  these 
heroes  of  the  faith  made  to  the  armies  sent  to  extirpate 
them.  You  have  read  the  little  story  of  Pierre  and  his 
Family,  have  you  not  ?  If  I  remember  rightly  it  is  about 
these  very  people.  At  last,  after  centuries  of  martyrdom, 
these  Protestant  communities  have  won  entire  toleration. 
They  have  ventured  down  into  the  great  Lombard  and 
Piedmontese  plain,  which  spreads  one  great  sea  of  verdure 
in  full  sight  of  their  lofty  valleys,  where,  like  Jesus  over 
Jerusalem,  they  have  brooded  over  Italy  so  many  ages, 
longing  to  descend  and  save.  They  have  a  church  at 
Turin,  which  I  attended,  a  church  at  Nice,  a  church  at 
Florence,  or  rather  a  school  for  educating  ministers,  and 
a  church  at  Naples.  They  are  full  of  the  thought  of 
*^  evangelizing  Italy,"  and  their  protest  will  give  life  to 
liberty  of  thought.  But  they  will  not  make  many  converts, 
I  think.  Italians,  by  constitution  as  well  as  by  education, 
prefer  Catholicism  to  Calvinism,  and  when  they  are  free 
from  that,  will  react  to  a  freer  and  more  rational  faith  than 
Calvinism.  Well,  I  went  far  up  the  valleys,  and  saw  the 
simple  people,  the  children  going  to  school  along  the  moun- 
tain paths,  the  plain  old  cottages  nestling  among  the  crags, 
the  mill  streams  in  the  glens  and  green  meadows,  the  re- 
joicing mountain  floods  pouring  down  everywhere  from  the 
snowy  heights,  singing  their  songs  of  liberty.  I  fell  in, 
very  fortunately,  with  the  schoolmaster  of  the  village  of 

,  who  gave  me  all  the  information  I  wanted,  pointed 

out  the  rocks  and  caves  and  passes,  famous  in  Vaudois 
history,  —  "  not  a  cliff,  not  a  rock  on  these  hills  where 
Vaudois  blood  has  not  flowed,"  he  said.  The  people  are 
very  poor  and  unlearned,  and  their  trust  in  "  evangelizing 
Italy  "  is  very  touching.  One  thing  disappointed  me  at  first, 
their  churches  are  all  new,  at  least,  not  old  ;  even  here,  the 
Catholic  portion  of  the  population,  though  very  small,  has  all 


86  MEMOIR. 

the  antiquity  in  church  architecture.  But  I  remembered  that 
all  the  Protestant  churches  were  destroyed  by  their  perse- 
cutors, and  that  never  till  now  have  they  had  inducement  to 
build  permanent  places  of  worship.  Their  temples  have 
been  these  mountain  caves  and  cliffs,  altars  and  shrines  "  not 
made  with  hands."  But  I  must  defer  further  account  of 
these  things  till  I  come  home.  I  see  the  Southern  Confeder- 
acy has  declared  war  and  taken  Fort  Sumter.  It  will  have 
the  effect  to  unite  the  North  1  think,  and  to  put  all  slavery 
on  one  side  and  all  freedom  on  the  other.  I  am  sorry  that 
civil  war  should  come  of  it,  and  I  hope  it  will  not  last.  But 
the  North  must  not  yield,  let  what  will  come. 

London,  July  16, 1861 
In  London,  every  reflecting  person  sees  the  tremendous 
necessity  of  maintaining  social  order  in  so  crowded  a  com- 
munity, and  so  throws  all  his  energy  in  that  direction,  even 
while  fully  aware  that  the  people,  and  he  himself  perhaps 
as  one  of  them,  have  by  no  means  their  just  measure  of 
political  power.  He  is  content  to  seek  progress  in  a 
moderate  and  gradual  way.  In  America,  where  the  pop- 
ular voice  gets  heard  so  much  more  readily,  we  move 
much  faster,  sometimes  quite  violently,  to  our  result.  At 
this  the  English  shrus:  their  shoulders  and  shake  their 
heads.  But,  in  fact,  they  have  yet  in  store  the  real  con- 
flict with  their  aristocracy  of  Church  and  State,  though 
approaching  it  more  slowly  than  we  have  approached 
our  corresponding  conflict  with  the  oligarchy  of  the  slave 
power. 

The  political  reformers  are  not  agreed  to  ask  for  more 
than  the  diminution  of  the  property  qualification  now  re- 
quired for  the  franchise.  It  seems  to  me  that  a  time  must 
soon  come  when  the  masses  will  become  weary  of  the  slow 
way  in  which  the  aristocracy  concede  ground,  and  then, 
perhaps,  will  be  seen  such  a  struggle  between  their  tradi- 
tional English  respect  for  established  law,  and  the  love  of 


MEMOIR.  87 

liberty,  which  lies  equally  deep  in  the  English  nature,  as 
the  national  conscience  has  never  experienced. 

As  to  our  affairs,  the  'Engliah  people  are  as  much  on  our 
side  as  we  can  expect  them  to  be,  until  we  raise  the  Emanci- 
pation flag.  It  is  a  pity  they  are  not  roused  to  the  expression 
of  this  sympathy  somehow,  if  it  were  only  to  strike  dismay 
into  the  hearts  of  the  conspirators, 'as  well  as  to  urge  on 
the  English  government  to  some  positive  manifestation  of  at 
least  moral  approval  of  our  cause.  But  meantime,  as  the 
Lancashire  cotton-spinners  are  certainly  looking  to  India, 
Australia,  and  elsewhere  for  new  supplies  of  that  material, 
the  war  will  strike  a  blow  at  slavery,  which  the  vainglo- 
rious creatures,  who  are  trying  to  ride  King  Cotton  over 
the  heads  of  all  civilized  states,  have  no  conception  of. 

I  attended  a  meeting  at  Exeter  Hall,  the  very  night  of 
my  arrival  here,  held  to  welcome  John  Anderson,  the  fugi- 
tive slave.  It  was  full  of  enthusiasm,  and  the  speakers 
showed  themselves  well  acquainted  with  the  sins,  both  of 
the  South  and  the  North,  not  doing  quite  justice,  I  thought, 
to  the  present  state  of  feeling  in  the  North,  nor  seeing  suf- 
ficiently that  now  is  the  moment,  by  encouraging  the  anti- 
slavery  sentiment  which  is  gaining  vigor,  to  make  it  the 
mastering  spirit  in  this  crisis.  However,  the  meeting  paid 
us  a  compliment  in  refusing  to  listen  to  a  speaker  (not  on 
the  programme)  who  undertook  to  say  that  the  North  was 
as  pro-slavery  as  the  South,  and  that  he  believed  our 
government  would  sell  the  fugitive  slaves  to  pay  the  ex- 
penses of  the  war.  He  was  put  down  by  a  storm  of  hisses 
and  groans.  This  probably  don't  appear  in  the  reports  of 
the  meeting.  Poor  John  Anderson  was  so  overcome  by 
the  enthusiasm  that  he  broke  down  in  attempting  to  speak 
and  tell  his  story.  But  William  Craft  and  others  vindi- 
cated the  capacity  of  the  African  race,  by  making  capital 
speeches.  It  seemed  very  like  an  anti-slavery  convention 
in  America,  only  the  speakers  had  it  all  their  own  way, 
and  there  was  no  prejudice  to  overcome,  nobody  to  convert. 


88  MEMOIR. 

How  I  wished  Phillips  or  Garrison  might  have  been  there 
to  speak  for  the  North ;  in  place  of  a  debile  creature  like 
myself,  who  can  neither  be  shamed  nor  stirred  into  the  ca- 
pacity to  make  a  speech,  and  had  to  sit  in  the  background 
and  impatiently  wish  that  I  could.  However,  the  audience 
were  not  disposed  to  hear  any  discussion  of  the  merits  of 
North  or  South,  being  bent  upon  the  English  policy  of 
political  non-interference.  .  .  . 

From  Brussels,  I  went  straight  to  Dover  by  Calais,  a 
journey  of  about  a  day,  the  passage  of  the  straits,  however, 
occupying  only  about  an  hour  and  a  quarter  or  a  half,  and 
found  myself  once  more,  as  it  were,  on  home-ground.  At 
Dover  I  left  my  baggage,  and  set  out  on  a  foot  journey 
through  a  portion  of  Kent,  the  great  hop-ground,  the  "  gar- 
den of  England,"  and  —  the  home  of  my  ancestors.  Of 
course  I  could  not  come  so  near  as  Dover,  without  pilgrim- 
aging to  Heme  Hill,  to  hunt  up  family  vestiges,  hoping,  at 
least,  if  I  found  no  cousins,  to  behold  some  old  homestead 
or  family  tombstone.  At  last  I  came  out  on  the  high  road 
to  Canterbury,  the  famous  "  Watling  Street,"  along  which 
they  used  to  go  in  Catholic  times  to  the  shrine  of  Thomas 
h  Becket  in  Canterbury  Cathedral,  where  the  stone  pave- 
ment is  worn  into  hollows  by  the  knees  of  the  worshippers 
who  have  bent  there  to  ask  the  saint's  blessing,  coming 
from  all  parts  of  the  Romish  world.  This  is  the  road  of 
Chaucer's  "  Pilgrims  ; "  and  I  looked  upon  it  with  special 
love  and  trod  it  with  due  devoutness  in  the  thought  thereof. 
I  could  fancy  the  broad  white  way  thronged  with  the  an- 
tique and  pied  cavalcades, 

"  Gon  on  pilgrimages, 
The  holy  blissful  martyr  for  to  seke, 
That  hem  hath  holpen,  whan  that  they  were  seke." 

Doubtless  A.  and  R.  N.  will  remember  Chaucer  suffi- 
ciently to  appreciate  my  enjoyment  of  this  part  of  my 
walk. 

All  this  while  you  must  consider  that  my  old  friends,  the 


MEMOIR.  89 

clouds,  so  faithful  to  me  everywhere,  were  perpetually  drop- 
ping showers,  and  I  feared  my  patriarchal  researches  would 
be  overtaken  by  a  deluge.  I  trusted,  however,  in  so  purely 
historical  an  experience,  that  an  ark  would  not  be  wanting, 
and  you  will  see  that  I  was  not  disappointed — Faversham, 
a  very  antique  place  indeed,  with  low,  gabled  houses,  over- 
hanging second  stories  and  innumerable  bay  windows,  very 
busy  too.  All  along  the  roads  here,  the  green  fields  were 
full  of  apple  and  cherry-trees,  alas  !  bearing  scarcely  any 
fruit  this  year.  I  turned  off  the  high  road  to  the  little 
hamlet  of  Boughton-under-Blee,  in  which  is  included 
Heme  Hill  about  a  mile  off.  As  I  entered  it,  the  rain 
burst  overhead  in  torrents.  At  the  little  "  Red  Squirrel " 
inn  I  sought  in  vain  for  tidings  of  the  Johnson  family. 
There  were  none  remaining  in  the  vicinity.  As  soon  as 
the  thunder-storm  was  over  for  the  moment,  I  hastened 
oif,  through  green  by-lanes  and  pleasant  woody  nooks,  to 
Heme  Hill.  The  scenery  grew  lovelier  every  moment, 
and  before  I  reached  the  old  church,  I  wondered  my  fore- 
fathers could  ever  have  left  so  charming  a  region,  which,  by 
the  way,  could  not  have  been  so  very  different  two  hundred 
years  ago  from  now.  It  is  a  rich,  rolling  country,  with  fer- 
tile bottoms,  well  wooded  hills,  and  distant  rounded  downs  ; 
in  general  outline,  as  seen  from  a  little  distance,  really  not 
unlike  North  Andover.  Were  the  Johnson  brothers  at- 
tracted by  the  resemblance  to  take  up  their  abode  in  the 
latter  place  ? 

The  old  church  stands  on  a  hill,  embosomed  in  trees,  the 
inn  and  two  or  three  more  houses  beside  it,  but  nothing 
like  a  village,  the  population  being  scattered  on  the  hills. 
It  is  a  very  antique  Gothic  church,  with  a  tower  at  the  end, 
and  a  smaller  round  tower  at  one  angle  of  the  latter,  as  is 
common  in  these  old  village  churches.  I  looked  carefully 
through  the  quiet  yard,  patiently  deciphering  many  in- 
scriptions that  were  almost  effaced  by  age,  or  covered  with 
moss  ;  not  an  easy  task,  as  the  grass  was  quite  wet,  and  the 


90  MEMOIR. 

rain  threatened  to  fall.  But  I  found  no  sign  of  my  fore- 
fathers. So  then  I  resorted  to  the  little  "  Red  Lion  "  inn, 
close  by,  kept  by  Noah  Miles,  —  manifestly  the  Arh,  — 
where  the  good  wife  of  Noah  received  me  hospitably,  and 
I  ordered  a  dinner,  meanwhile  making  a  descent  on  the 
parish  clerk,  to  consult  the  church  registers.  He  took  me 
into  the  church,  and  opened  the  old  trunk  which  held  rec- 
ords going  back  to  the  sixteenth  century!  —  ye  which  I 
faithfully  perused,  deriving  but  little  satisfaction  ;  uncle  S. 
might  have  been  more  successful,  and  I  wished  he  was  with 
me ;  the  fact,  however,  I  brought  away,  that  from  1 687  to 
1697  John  Johnson  was  vicar  of  Heme  Hill  and  Bough- 
ton,  removed  to  St.  John's  in  Thanet,  afterwards  to  Apple- 
dore,  and  lastly  to  Cranbrook,  and  was  author  of  several 
learned  and  valuable  tracts.  At  about  the  same  time  one 
Edward  Johnson  is  mentioned,  but  I  cannot  connect  him 
with  the  emigrants  to  America.  Whether  the  vicar  had 
children  does  not  appear.  Perhaps  father  will  remember 
when  our  ancestors  came  over.  My  impression  is  that  it 
was  before  1687,  but  I  am  not  sure.  The  meagreness  of 
my  discoveries  was  something  of  a  damper,  to  which  the 
rain  added  somewhat,  pouring  in  such  floods  that  I  found  it 
difficult  to  reach  the  ark  in  safety.  I  have  very  pleasant 
recollections  of  the  neat  little  inn,  however,  and  of  Heme 
Hill  generally,  and  was  not  sorry  to  have  made  the  pilgrim- 
age, though  it  did  not  give  me  the  information  I  hoped  for. 
Over  the  airy  hills,  among  the  pleasant  woodlands,  looking 
back  now  and  then  to  the  low  tower  rising  amidst  its 
ancestral  trees,  to  the  road  of  the  Canterbury  pilgrims  again. 
Soon  overtaken  again  by  rain  and  one  of  the  most  violent 
thunder-storms  I  ever  saw,  the  lightning  striking  once  so 
near  that  I  almost  felt  it.  But  it  passed,  and  before  sun- 
set I  came  in  sight  of  the  Cathedral,  just  visible,  ghost-like, 
in  the  distant  vapor  which  obscured  the  town,  and  was 
slowly  clearing.  Just  then  a  magnificent  rainbow  spanned 
the  heavens  far  above  it,  so  that  the  grand  old  pile,  with 


MEMOIR.  91 

its  tall  towers,  stood  directly  under  the  centre  of  the  arch ! 
What  a  joyful  omen  it  would  have  seemed  to  the  pilgrims 
in  the  olden  time !  I  can  give  you  no  description  of  that 
wonderful  Cathedral,  traditionally  the  oldest  in  England, 
constructed  and  adorned,  therefore,  with  all  the  grandeur 
which  the  nation  is  capable  of  concentrating  upon  it. 
Stately  and  massive,  standing  as  if  built  for  eternity, 
beautifully  proportioned,  all  its  parts  in  harmony,  it  is  one 
of  the  finest  specimens  of  what  Coleridge  called  Gothic  ar- 
chitecture, —  "  frozen  music,"  that  I  have  ever  seen.  The 
front  towers  and  gateway  are  covered  with  exquisitely 
cut  niche  work,  though  curiously  enough  without  a  single 
statue.  There  is  beautiful  Norman  work,  and  early  English, 
and  later  Gothic,  —  specimens  of  every  style  of  architec- 
ture England  has  known.  There  are  quiet  old  cloisters  on 
low  Norman  arches,  with  beautiful  sheaf-groining  and  quad- 
ruple-light windows,  surrounding  a  green  graveyard ;  there 
are  noble  groves  and  broad  lawns,  enclosed  by  antique 
buildings  and  ivy-clad  ruins ;  there  are  stately  towers,  and 
choir  behind  choir,  and  transept  beyond  transept,  all  gath- 
ered into  one  venerable  form  full  of  majesty,  beauty,  and 
repose.  Within,  if  the  whole  could  be  seen  at  one  view,  it 
would  bear  comparison  with  Milan  and  Cologne  in  every 
way.  But  the  choir,  in  which  the  services  of  the  English 
Church  are  performed  in  great  pomp  of  formalism,  is  sep- 
arated by  a  heavy  screen  from  the  transepts  and  nave,  on 
one  side,  and  the  smaller  transepts  and  remoter  choirs  and 
chapels  on  the  other.  In  one  of  these  latter  is  Thomas  a 
Becket's  shrine,  or  ivas  ;  as  I  said,  the  knee-worn  floors  tes- 
tify of  the  authority  of  sainthood  and  martyrdom  in  those 
old  days. 

VIII. 

In  the  autumn  of  1861  Johnson  returned  to  his 
Salem  home ;  and  soon  resumed  his  ministry  in  the 


92  MEMOIB. 

Free  Church  of  Lynn,  which  continued  for  nine 
years  longer.  They  were  years  of  great  excitement 
—  the  years  of  secession,  war,  and  reconstruction. 
When  Johnson  heard  abroad  the  news  of  the  seces- 
sion of  the  Southern  States,  his  first  feeling  was, 
as  was  that  of  many  anti-slavery  men,  that  the  slave- 
holding  States  should  be  permitted  to  withdraw,  tak- 
ing with  them  their  curse  of  slavery  and  relieving 
the  free  States  from  its  burden  and  guilt.  But  after 
his  return  to  America  he  saw  that  there  were  ample 
reasons  for  holding  to  the  Union  and  converting  it  to 
freedom.  From  that  point  of  view  he  watched  the 
progress  of  the  war  with  intense  interest  and  keen 
criticism  ;  and  that  of  reconstruction  with  impatience 
and  frequent  indignation.  He  did  not  spare  Lincoln 
in  his  judgments,  still  less  Andrew  Johnson  and 
Seward.      "  Sumner,"  he  writes,  "  steers  on  his  way 

fearlessly,  undeceived,  and  unswerving ;  while 

ducks  about  looking  after  the  half  loaf,  which,  in  his 
wisdom,  he  thinks  is  all  we  can  get.  Sumner's 
scholar-life  saves  him  from  all  this  dependence  on 
the  popular  current."  In  all  this  we  may  see  the 
idealist,  with  his  absolute  law  of  right ;  the  Puritan, 
with  his  one  straight  way ;  perhaps  the  doctrinaire^ 
with  his  obliviousness  of  practical  difficulties.  But 
in  all  times,  the  idealist,  the  Puritan,  the  non-con- 
formist are  needed  to  keep  up  the  practical  men  to  a 
higher  standard. 

In  England,  Johnson  had  seen  something  of  the 
feeling  of  the  mass  of  the  people  ;  that  in  spite  of  the 
aristocratic  leaning  toward  the  side  of  the  secession- 
ists, the  large  middle  and  working  class  were  in  our 
favor,  the  manufacturing  population  bearing  with 
patience  the  suffering  which  the  war  brought  them. 


MEMOIR.  93 

And  finding  on  his  return  how  bitter  a  feeling  ex- 
isted toward  England  on  account  of  her  supposed 
hostility,  he  showed,  in  a  noble  discourse,  to  his  own 
congregation  and  at  the  Music  Hall,  in  Boston,  what 
injustice  this  did  to  the  English  people. 

TO    GEORGE   L.    STEARNS. 

March  19,  1862. 
Do  you  not  feel  inclined,  —  when  you  see  the  nation  of 
negro-phobists  compelled  to  make  Port- Royal  the  Plym- 
outh Rock  of  a'  new  experiment  of  transforming  into  citi- 
zens the  race  they  have  spit  upon,  —  to  cry  out  in  the 
words  of  the  old  hymn, 

"  Mark  the  wonders  of  His  hand ; 
Power,  no  empire  can  withstand  !  " 

We  are  borne  on  the  saving  tide  towards  issues  which 
the  whole  nation,  North  and  South  (or  practically  the 
whole),  has  resisted  and  still  resists.  A  terrible  Nemesis, 
a  stern  atonement ;  and  then,  the  "  irresistible  Grace  of 
God!'' 

November  9,  1862. 

Perhaps  I  am  too  sanguine ;  certainly  more  so  than 
most  of  my  friends.  But  this  "  Providential  aspect "  — 
this  magnificent  sweep  of  purification,  —  grows  more  and 
more  impressive  to  me.  I  cannot  escape  confidence,  if  I 
would. 

TO    MRS.    G.    L.    STEARNS. 

December  29,  1862. 
What  a  year  this  has  been  !  Last  week  I  worked  out  a 
sort  of  Record  of  it  for  my  Sunday  word.  The  disasters, 
forcing  benefits,  a  chronological  miracle-series,  which  have 
brought  us  where  we  are,  closing  us  in  like  the  narrowing 
of  a  mountain-pass  to  the  one  "  narrow  way ; "  no  exit  but 
by  justice,  —  these  make  it  to  me  the  grandest  year  I  know 
of  in  history.  And  I  cannot  comprehend  the  despondency 
which  I  find  among  thoughtful,  earnest  men. 


94  MEMOIR. 

Lincoln,  backing  slowly  into  God's  highway,  with  his 
face  always  turned  to  Kentucky,  is  not  the  least  of  these 
wonders.  I  have  small  faith  in  most  of  our  public  men, 
who  seem  to  be  visible  in  the  drama  only  to  show  how 
petty  a  factor  individuals  are  in  this  working  out  of  Fate, 
this  slow  uplifting  of  a  people ;  their  inertness  and  resist- 
ance simply  leverage.  But  we  are  among  the  mountains  of 
God.  We  can't  stop  the  avalanche  after  it  has  started, 
though  it  began  with  a  snow-ball. 

TO   R.    H.    MANNING. 

*  March  4,  1 864. 

...  In  the  afternoon  I  pushed  on  to  Boston  and  Salem, 
having  the  pleasure  in  the  car  of  the  company  of  a  little  fel- 
low about  six  years  old  whom  I  never  saw  before,  but  who 
took  wonderfully  to  asking  me  questions  in  a  charming  lit- 
tle way ;  all  along  the  road  keeping  up  a  constant  prattle, 
in  the  course  of  which  he  informed  me  of  about  every- 
thing he  knew;  and,  finally,  in  getting  out,  volunteered 
his  name  and  where  he  lived,  —  how  much  better  way 
than  we  elders  have,  who  must  hand  out  our  cards !  His 
mother,  who  sat  behind,  thought  it  necessary  to  apologize 
for  his  "  forwardness,"  but  she  would  n't  if  she  had  known 
me. 

So  here  I  am  again,  ruminating  over  the  good  time  I 
have  had  with  you  all.  You  little  know,  dear  friends,  how 
much  good  a  visit  to  you  does  me,  nor  how  much  more 
hopefully  and  cheerfully  I  take  hold  of  my  work  for  hav- 
ing felt  the  influence  of  your  frank  and  cordial  friendship, 
and  seen  your  practical,  thorough  devotion  to  whatsoever 
good  thing  lies  nearest  the  path  of  manly  men  and  woman- 
ly women  in  this  laud. 

April  22,  1864. 

If  anything  could  confound  the  fogies  who  swear  by  the 
old  Ecclesiast  that  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun,  it  is 
this  fact  that  two  hundred  millions  have  been  contributed 
in  this  country  in  the  last  three  years  for  relief  of  the 


MEMOIR.  95 

suffering  in  this  war.  The  sun  never  shone  on  the  like 
before. 

Have  you  read  George  L.  Stearns's  letter  in  the  Anti- 
Slavery  Standard  of  April  8  ?  If  not,  let  not  sleep  close 
your  eyelids  till  you  do.  It  is  a  revelation  of  the  trifling 
and  trickery  at  Washington  that  makes  one  blush  for  his 
country.  Stearns  is  a  man  of  utter  integrity,  and  ^very 
word  must  be  wholly  true.  The  effect  of  this  letter,  with 
Fort  Pillow  and  the  scandalous  Hahn  election,  must  be  to 
rouse  people  to  some  sense  of  the  mischievous  policy  at 
work. 

We  have  had  L.  here  in  Salem  preaching  for  two  socie- 
ties for  two  months,  quickening  the  dead  both  spiritually 

and  politically.     At  the church,  where,  for  seven  or 

eight  years,  scarcely  a  living  ray  of  freedom  or  justice  has 
penetrated,  his  first  sermon  produced  an  explosion,  and  the 
Episcopal  church  caught  the  fragments  in  her  white  apron, 
nicely  spread  out  for  the  purpose. 

I  have  heard  of  Col.  Zulavsky's  experience  on  board  the 
transport.     What  need  we   have   in   our  army  of  young 

officers  like  him.    H ,  I  am  sure,  is  doing  nobly.    What 

satisfaction  it  must  be  to  you  that  he  is  with  such  a  com- 
mander and  in  such  company  as  his  regiment  affords. 

The  way  out  of  slavery  is  a  long  one.  Social  order  is 
not  a  thing  to  be  picked  up  off"  a  battle-field  before  the 
grass  has  grown  over  the  dead. 

July  26,  1865. 
I  have  been  reading  Youmans's  admirable  book.  The 
substance  of  the  whole  is  the  grandest  thought  science  has 
attained ;  that  nothing  is  lost,  and  that  all  forces  are  mu- 
tually convertible.  I  accept  it  fully,  and  see  in  it  the  finest 
intellectual  and  spiritual  correspondences.  I  hate,  how- 
ever, to  plod  through  details  of  experiments,  without  the 
apparatus.  Even  Tyndall,  who  is  the  most  delightfully 
clear  and  simple,  as  well  as  poetic,  demonstrator  of  scien- 
tific processes,  rather  wearies  me.     I  am  after  the  Law ; 


96  MEMOIR. 

give  me  that,  and  I  will  use  it  where  I  want  it.  But  illus- 
trative details,  except  in  the  actual  world  of  facts,  —  writ- 
ten details,  bore  me. 

The  spectrum  analyses  of  stars,  etc.,  in  Kirchhoff  and 
Buusen's  researches,  have  interested  me  very  much.  I  hope 
there  will  soon  be  published  some  good  popular  work  on 
the  subject. 

We  are  again  in  a  nip  among  the  political  icebergs.  God 
will  save  us,  I  trust,  as  hitherto.  How  much  more  perilous 
peace  looks  than  war  !  The  negroes  must  have  the  ballot 
or  everything  will  be  wrong.  We  are  baser  than  Davis  if 
we  don't  give  the  rights  of  citizens  to  the  race  that  has 
saved  us. 

His  intense  interest  in  all  these  public  affairs  did 
not  withdraw  him  from  his  studies.  He  did  not,  like 
Goethe,  in  the  War  of  Liberation,  retire  to  learn  the 
Chinese  language.  But  he  found  time  to  begin  those 
profound  studies,  and  to  gather  and  digest  the  ma- 
terials which  grew  into  his  great  work  on  the  Ori- 
ental Religions  and  their  Relations  to  Universal  Re- 
ligion. The  first  volume,  upon  India,  appeared  in 
1872.  The  book,  with  its  large  scope,  its  faithful 
pains-taking  research,  its  philosophic  treatment  and 
broad  spirit,  was  a  rare  credit  to  American  scholar- 
ship. But  the  slight  recognition  given  to  such  a 
work  in  the  leading  critical  reviews  was  certainly  a 
discredit.  The  North  American  accorded  it  only  a 
brief  book  notice.  Mr.  Ripley,  in  the  columns  of 
the  New  York  Tribune  gave  a  long  and  favorable  re- 
view, and  there  were  in  the  papers  some  other  appre- 
ciative notices. 

The  second  volume,  on  China,  was  published  in 
1877.  Before  long  he  was  engaged  upon  the  third 
and  last,  on  Persia,  which  he  did  not  live  to  finish. 


MEMOIR.  97 

The  completed  chapters  will,  it  is  hoped,  be  given  to 
the  public. 

To  the  preparation  of  these  works  he  gave  years 
of  laborious  investigation  and  thought.  He  read 
carefully  the  writings  of  the  best  scholars,  linguists, 
travelers,  in  German,  French,  and  English,  which 
bore  upon  his  subject.  He  worked  over  these  large 
materials,  and  added  to  them  his  original  thought. 
Moved  by  his  characteristic  thoroughness  he  discussed 
not  only  the  mythologies,  theologies,  and  worships  of 
these  Eastern  nations  ;  he  held  religion  to  cover,  or 
at  least  to  grow  out  of,  or  be  modified  by,  all  the 
national  life  of  the  peoples.  So  he  wrote  full  chap- 
ters upon  their  government,  education,  science,  social 
life,  and  the  like.  He  brought  to  his  work  every 
kind  of  available  knowledge,  except  personal  knowl- 
edge of  the  countries  and  of  the  languages  of  their 
sacred  books.  This  he  took,  as  has  been  noted, 
"  at  second  hand."  Had  he  given  the  needed  time 
to  them,  we  should  never  have  had  his  books.  His 
years  were  not  enough  for  the  work,  as  it  was  ;  and 
he  wisely  accepted  the  principle  of  the  "  division  of 
labor."  Had  he  been  able  to  make  his  own  transla- 
tions, it  is  not  easy  to  see  that  they  would  have  been 
of  any  more  worth  to  us  than  those  of  the  learned 
German  scholars  of  whose  labors  he  availed  himself. 
Besides,  the  most  learned  linguist  may  well  be  want- 
ing in  the  philosophic  and  the  spiritual  insight  which 
Johnson  possessed,  and  which  are  needed  for  the  right 
treatment  of  the  subject  he  had  in  view  —  Compara- 
tive Religion.  It  may  be  true,  as  Professor  Max 
Miiller  suggests,  that,  in  some  instances,  he  used  less 
trustworthy  authorities ;  but  in  the  main  he  must 
have  used  the  very  highest,  since  these  cannot  but 


98  MEMOIR. 

reveal  themselves  to  an  intelligent  student,  and  since 
he  used  all  the  authorities  that  there  were.  It  is 
somewhat  difficult  to  account  for  the  want  of  just 
appreciation  of  these  books  in  certain  critical  quarters. 
Their  voluminousness  and  exhaustive  treatment,  as 
well  as  the  nature  of  their  subject,  are  doubtless  in  the 
way  of  general  readers  in  these  hurried  days.  But, 
for  all  students  of  comparative  religion,  they  will  re- 
main a  treasure-house  not  only  of  materials  but  of 
original  thought  which  they  can  ill  afford  to  neglect. 
He  also  wrote  a  very  able  and  scholarly  little  book, 
called  The  Worship  of  Jesus.  Thinking  that  those 
who  rejected  that  worship,  even  in  its  most  modified 
form,  were  bound  to  explain  its  existence,  he  traced 
its  origin  and  growth  on  purely  natural  grounds. 
This  book  was  published  by  the  Free  Religious  As- 
sociation in  1868. 


TO  s.  L. 

February,  1866. 
Of  Higginson's  translation  of  Epictetus  you  will  see  my 
notice  in  the  January  Radical.  Lecky's  Rationalism  in 
Europe  shows  that  the  impulse  of  free  examination  and  ra- 
tional inquiry  is  the  great  impulse  of  modern  times,  that 
it  has  overturned  superstition,  and  that  it  is  irresistible. 
The  work  is  very  learned  but  not  in  the  least  pedantic, 
and  full  of  information  on  matters  little  investigated ;  more 
courteous  and  positive,  too,  than  Buckle,  more  entertain- 
ing than  Spencer,  or  any  other  of  the  favorite  writers  of  the 
semimaterialistic  school.  I  am  enjoying  a  little  book  by  F. 
Pecaut,  De  VAvenir  du  Theisme  Chretien.  .  .  .  The  great 
company  of  the  Unitarian  prophets  in  New  York  have 
been  holding  forth  successively  at  Cooper  Institute  on 
Liberal  Christianity.  I  saw  the  report  of  Bellows's  lec- 
ture ;  "  Unitarianism  is  the  denial  that  Jesus  is  God,  but  the 


MEMOIR.  99 

affirmation  that  he  is  the  Son  of  God,  and  only  Mediator." 
I  am  glad  you  like  the  "  Bond  and  Free  "  in  The  Radical. 
You  will  see  Clarke's  criticism  in  the  December  number. 
My  answer  comes  out  in  February. 

April  24,  1866. 
I  have  been  preaching  in  Cincinnati  to  Conway's  old  so- 
ciety. They  are  munificent  in  their  hospitalities,  and  I 
spent  a  charming  month  with  them.  It  quite  enlightened 
me  as  to  the  West.  I  saw  the  under-current  of  American 
life  breaking  up  and  modifying  sects  and  creeds,  as  prepa- 
ration for  an  American  religion  based  on  human  nature 
in  its  largest  representation  and  free  expression.  I  am 
amazed  at  the  growth  of  freedom  among  the  Jews.  For 
instance,  they  seem  to  be  coming  out  on  our  ground.  You 
can  easily  see  how  this  should  be.  Their  pure  theism  sep- 
arated from  Bibliolatry  and  Messianic  literalism  is  the 
same  with  ours.  The  many  sects,  especially  foreign  ones, 
in  the  Western  cities  modify  each  other  greatly  ;  and  even 
the  materialistic  set  of  enterprise  on  so  vast  a  scale  seems 
to  me  bound  to  prepare  the  way,  by  absorbing  men  in 
physical  law,  for  the  recognition  of  God  in  this  world,  from 
which  the  old  theologies  have  banished  Him.  The  Conti- 
nent will,  at  least,  reaffirm  Nature.  And  I  have  full  faith 
that  the  grand  morality  of  our  political  idea,  as  we  are 
compelled  to  interpret  it,  will  force  the  religious  sentiment 
into  natural  channels,  and  make  materialism  issue  out  into 
a  spiritual  faith.  Human  nature  is  the  great  watchword  in 
this  country,  and  we  are  bound  to  make  the  most  of  it  re- 
ligiously also. 

April,  1866. 
I  have  seen  Niagara  at  last,  though  under  clouds  and 
rain  only,  yet  in  the  very  climax  of  its  winter  glory.  The 
low  circle  of  falling  waters,  as  a  whole,  did  not  move  me 
as  most  seem  to  be  moved.  It  was  so  large  that  I  compared 
it,  I  suppose,  with  what  is  larger  still  —  the  ocean ;  or, 


100  MEMOIR. 

perhaps,  the  weather  was  too  unfavorable.  It  was  when  I 
thought  of  it,  rather  than  when  I  saw  it,  that  I  felt  its 
greatness,  as  a  whole.  But  the  ice-bridge  and  the  great 
ice-dome,  formed  by  the  falling  spray,  right  under  the  Amer- 
ican Fall !  !  I  saw  these  in  perfection,  in  the  very  close 
of  winter.  I  stood  on  this  dome,  sixty  feet  high  at  least, 
and  looked  up  to  the  waters  descending  out  of  the  sky,  and 
down  into  the  impenetrable  abyss  where  they  fell  thunder- 
ing, and  out  of  which  came,  whirling  up  like  volcanic  fires, 
great  volumes  of  spray,  far  above  my  head,  to  descend  in 
rain  of  sleet  swept  by  the  wind  round  me,  and  falling  in 
fair  and  perfect  lines  of  construction  to  build  up  this  beau- 
tiful shape.  That  was  magnificent  indeed  !  And  then  to 
cross  the  river  on  an  ice-mass,  that  looked  from  above  like 
the  Grindelwald-glacier,  or  the  Mer-de-Glace  on  a  smaller 
scale ;  and  to  see  the  wondrous  green  and  amber  of  the  river 
above  and  below  the  fall,  contrasting  with  the  snow  garment 
and  the  ice  mail,  —  all  this  amply  compensated  me  for  the 
lack  of  summer  verdure  and  the  sunshine  that  would  not 
come. 

TO   MR.    AND    MRS.    GORHAM. 

July  25, 1866. 

I  have  just  heard  the  tidings  of  your  great  bereavement, 
so  sudden  and  so  peculiarly  painful  in  its  circumstances. 
All  my  cherished  recollections  of  your  pleasant  home  come 
over  me,  and  the  aflOiiction  which  so  darkens  it  presses  upon 
me  as  a  personal  sorrow.  .  .  . 

I  know  indeed  how  it  is.  We  repeat  to  ourselves  and 
others  what  we  are  sure  is  so  true  of  the  dear  love  of 
God ;  of  the  beautiful  meaning  of  death,  the  natural  up- 
ward step  of  spiritual  life ;  of  the  compensations  time 
must  bring  for  present  desolation  of  heart ;  of  the  higher 
faith,  the  calmer  trust,  the  wider  sympathy  with  others  that 
spring  from  these  bitter  furrows.  But  the  heavy  change 
that  has  fallen  on  the  outward  life  and  the  earthly  home, 
remains  ;  and  none  of  these  divine  assurances  can  alter  the 


MEMOIR.  101 

fact  that  it  is  most  hard  to  become  wonted  to  the  new  re- 
lations that  bind  us  to  beloved  ones  who  have  passed  from 
our  sight.  And  yet  I  know  I  shall  not  intrude  too  much 
on  the  privacy  of  your  sorrow  if  I  come  and  sit  beside  you 
in  spirit,  and  tell  you  how  I  feel  about  this  dear  boy  for 
whom  you  mourn. 

This  at  least  is  sure :  you  cannot  make  him  dead ;  you 
cannot  feel  that  he  has  gone  from  you  ;  and  with  all  the 
heart-sinking  you  cannot  accept  the  thought  that  your  love 
and  care  are  to  know  no  more  return  from  him.  I  wish  I 
could  tell  you  how  firmly  I  believe  that  feelings  like  these, 
so  often  treated  as  illusion,  are  true,  are  of  God's  own  ten- 
der giving ;  that  in  them  is  the  very  heart  of  his  teaching 
through  the  mystery  that  we  call  death.  Our  affections 
are  forbidden  by  their  Maker  to  doubt  their  own  immortality. 
What  protest  they  make  against  the  destruction  of  what  is 
still  intensest  reality  to  them,  when  all  that  the  senses  could 
hold  by  is  gone  forever !  Never,  I  believe,  do  we  so  feel 
the  impossibility  of  real  separation  from  those  we  love,  as 
then.  Should  we  ever  know  the  rights  of  the  affections 
but  for  this  ?  Immortal  years,  beside  which  our  little  lives 
are  but  an  hour,  —  what  possibilities  of  full  satisfaction 
they  open!  And  we  sit  in  patience,  knowing  that  they 
m7ist  bring  us  back  our  holiest  possessions,  —  those  which 
have  ever  stood  under  the  shield  of  our  noblest  love  and 
conscience,  and  so  are  under  God's  blessing  forever.  The 
best  part  of  ourselves  has  not  been  given  us  for  nought. 

Shall  not  the  Love  that  gave  this  beautiful  child  know 
how  to  make  His  promise  good?  This  was  just  the  nature 
that  points  surely  onwards  and  upwards ;  whatsoever  de- 
serves to  expand  and  rejoice  in  the  heavenly  laws  was  here. 
I  cannot  dream  of  failure  or  defeat  where  Heaven  was  so 
pledged.  Here,  if  anywhere,  is  the  life  that  holds  ties 
unbroken,  promises  ever  guaranteeing  themselves.  To  you 
henceforth,  dear  friends,  in  all  your  earthly  loss  some  things 
are  clear,  some  gains   secure.     How  near  those  heavenly 


102  MEMOIR. 

mansions  of  a  freer  growth  beyond  physical  perils  and 
bonds,  must  come  to  you ;  hid  but  by  a  sacred  veil  that 
seems  ever  ready  to  be  raised ;  how  near,  even  when  they 
outwardly  seem  so  far ;  how  real,  how  full  of  dear  familiar 
life  ;  how  free  of  all  that  strangeness  and  fearfulness  that 
are  so  apt  to  gather  round  the  thought  of  the  transition  that 
comes  to  all !  In  the  peaceful  life  beyond,  what  treasures 
are  laid  up,  assured  to  you  by  all  the  omnipotence  of  God's 
love! 

I  cannot  help  thinking  of  youth  as  itself  the  eternal 
state  of  the  pure  in  heart ;  and  so,  the  change  that  comes 
to  those  who  pass  thereto,  all  fresh  with  the  very  dew  and 
sunshine  of  the  heavenly  morning  of  life,  it  seems  to  me, 
must  be  the  least  possible.  I  am  sure  that  on  the  image 
fixed  forever  in  your  hearts  there  can  never  fall  a  shadow 
as  of  years,  no  wrinkles  of  age,  no  burden  of  cares  and 
toils ;  it  will  stand  transfigured  in  its  own  happy  light, 
and  you  will  feel  the  presence  most  truly  in  your  mo- 
ments of  deepest  trust,  of  truest  loving  work. 

When  I  think  of  your  saddened  home,  I  remember  also 
that  your  hearts  are  closer  than  ever  to  the  Infinite  Heart. 
I  think  of  this,  —  that  they  have  committed  their  beloved 
to  the  Care  that  taught  them  how  to  care  for  him  ;  to  the 
Love  that  gave  their  love,  and  gave  it  that  it  might  not 
perish  but  have  eternal  life.  Of  compensations  that  will 
come,  as  you  wait  for  the  healing  hand  which  touches  only 
to  heal,  for  the  inward  light  that  rises  when  the  light  of 
the  household  seems  to  have  gone  out,  —  how  should  we 
try  to  speak  to  you  now  ?  But  may  we  not  take  your 
hands  to  say  gently  — "  God  will  comfort  you  and  make 
your  strength  equal  to  your  day  ?  " 

TO    . 

December,  1866. 
.  .  .  This  loving  Care  that  folds   in  our  little  lives,  how 
near  it  comes  when  we  need  it  most !     I  feel  as  if  it  held 


MEMOIR.  103 

yon  now  in  a  tenderness  such  as  none  of  us  can  know,  and 
none  know  how  to  ask  for.  "  The  night  will  be  light  about 
you,"  calling  you  to  what  trust-like  sleep,  bringing  out 
holy  eternal  stars  !  .  o  .  This  life  that  has  been  with  you 
so  long,  close  within  your  own,  must  still  be  yours.  The 
hidden  helps,  the  invisible  influences,  the  serener  support 
that  the  deeper,  diviner  needs  of  your  soul  call  for,  must 
come  to  you  from  her  higher  powers,  as  surely  as  her  dear- 
est associations  are  with  you  and  the  little  ones  in  whom 
you  both  alike  live,  as  surely  as  God  is  true.  Soon  may 
the  infinite  Motherly  Love  make  the  heavens  open  where 
they  are  most  darkened  now,  and  the  angels  descend  on 
your  saddened  home.  I  know  you  well  enough  to  know 
that  the  hour  will  bring  you  the  strength  you  need.  I 
know  that  you  will,  more  than  ever,  know  how  to  help  the 
weak  who  faint  amid  the  mysteries  of  those  laws  of  life 
we  call  death.  For  only  the  uplifted  face  of  one  who  has 
tasted  these  waters  and  found  them  divine,  can  help  such  to 
faith.  .  .  .  Here,  in  the  border  of  the  heavy  loss,  and  the 
change  it  is  so  hard  to  bring  into  the  daily  ways  of  life, 
feel  as  much  as  you  can,  how  many  hearts  there  are  that 
would  come  and  sit  with  you,  as  near  as  they  may,  with 
their  best  sympathy  and  faith.  And,  among  the  nearest, 
count  one  for  whom  your  presence  was  always  helpful,  and 
your  fidelity  and  manliness  a  constant  assurance  of  the 
best. 

TO    S.    L. 

December  25,  1867. 
A  happy  Christmas  to  you.  .  .  .  The  pictures  dropped  in 
at  the  moment  to  make  them  special  benedictions.  Yester- 
day my  sister  A.  was  married,  and  left  us  for  her  new  home 
in  Manchester  with  one  who,  I  am  sure,  will  make  her  a  true 
and  loving  husband.  We  saw  them  off  at  noon ;  and  then, 
you  will  imagine,  came  a  stronger  sense  of  what  I  had  lost 
from  my  side,  —  a  presence  whose  daily  influence  and  help, 
all  my  life  long,  has  been  more  to  me  than  I  can  ever  tell  or 


104  MEMOIR. 

ever  know.  And  so  I  was  feeling  somewhat  lonesome 
when  your  kind  gift  came  with  its  sunshine  to  make  me 
doubly  grateful. 

My  arm  is  improving,  though  I  am  still  the  "Armer 
Mann  "  in  many  essential  respects ;  not  having  yet  a  nat- 
ural feeling  in  the  shoulder,  nor  any  great  amount  of  mo- 
tion in  the  arm,  nor  freedom  from  pain,  especially  at  night. 
Yet  I  have  thrown  aside  the  sling,  and  make  frequent  ex- 
cursions to  Lynn.  I  have  still  a  sense  of  debility  and 
languor,  which  I  think  is  passing  away,  though  writing  is 
still  difficult.  Shackford  is  supplying  for  me.  I  am 
anxious  there  should  be  such  preaching  as  will  keep  the 
people  interested. 

TO  J.  W.  CHADWICK. 

October  6,  1869. 

Not  till  a  few  days  since  did  I  hear  of  the  sorrow  through 
which  your  Marblehead  home  is  passing.  .  .  .  These  ties 
which  make  the  unseen  more  real  than  the  seen;  these 
flowerings  of  the  affections  into  the  claim  of  immortality, 
as  their  justification ;  these  surrenders  that  change  personal 
anxiety  and  care  for  beloved  ones  into  inviolable  calm  and 
win  us  the  future  past  all  fear  of  loss,  —  who  that  has 
known  these  would  doubt  the  divine  benignity  of  what  we 
call  death  ? 

I  know  how  much  your  sister  has  been  to  you.  .  .  .  And 
now  it  will  all  be  spiritualized  and  made  part  of  your 
eternal  life.  And  you  will  know  how  to  reap  its  still,  ripe 
harvests,  and  to  make  them  cheer  and  refresh  a  world  that 
needs  nothing  so  much  as  spiritual  faith.  God  bless  you, 
my  friend,  in  this  new  trust  and  resource. 

I  have  spent  the  summer  vacation  at  Mt.  Desert,  and 
had  never  a  more  delightful  one.  On  all  our  New  Eng- 
land coast,  there  is  no  spot  that  combines  so  many  charming 
features  as  this  knot  of  mountains  set  in  an  archipelago  of 
pleasant  islands,  in  a  bay  protected  from  all  sharp  winds 


MEMOIR.  105 

save  one,  the  south-east,  which  rarely  blows.  ...  I  am  so 
busy  that  writing  to  best  friends  even,  seems  quite  out  of 
the  question.  What  is  friendship  if  it  could  not  take  for 
granted  that  silence  and  separation  only  deepens  its  in- 
terest ? 

TO   S.    L. 

July  11,  1871. 

I  must  renounce  all  excursions  this  year,  except  that, 
at  the  end  of  August,  I  shall  have  a  week  at  Nantucket, 
being  invited  to  prophesy  two  Sundays  on  those  sea-girt 
sands.  That  will  be  all  new  to  me.  I  have  had  no  other 
invitations,  and  my  preaching  since  giving  up  at  Lynn  last 
July  —  a  year  ago  —  amounts  to  just  three  Sundays,  all 
told. 

The  Music  Hall  experience  was  refreshing.  I  had  a 
grand,  earnest  audience,  and  the  congregational  singing  was 
inspiring. 

I  have  been  reading  Weiss  [^American  ReligioTi]  with 
delight,  and  the  other  day  sent  him  an  enthusiastic  letter. 
I  wish  I  could  review  his  book,  as  Morse  would  like  to 
have  me ;  but  it  is  just  what  1  cannot  do. 

I  have  been  reading  with  great  enjoyment  the  translation 
of  Dante,  with  the  entertaining  notes  and  illustrations.  I 
never  enjoyed  Dante  before,  and  had  given  up  expecting 
to  do  so. 

November  23,  1871. 

I  was  gratified  by  finding  you  liked  my  "  Labor  "  article 
in  the  Radical  so  much,  and  saw  so  clearly  the  very  points 
that  were  of  most  moment  to  myself.  Something  or  other 
about  it  seems  to  have  attracted  more  attention  than  is 
usual  with  my  lucubrations,  and  Morse  had  money  given 
him  to  reprint  it  in  pamphlet  form.  It  ought  to  have  been 
out  a  week  ago ;  but,  like  everything  else  that  depends 
upon  labor  promises,  has  been  greatly  delayed. 

By  the  way,  I  have  in  my  possession  for  your  behoof, 
and  waiting  your  pleasure,  one   enormous  moiety  of  our 


106  MEMOIR. 

profits  from  the  Fields  and  Osgood  mine.  The  amount  is 
one  hundred  twenty-four  and  a  half  cents  each  !  O  bloated 
capitalist,  I  will  inform  Ben  Butler  of  thy  monstrous 
gains  from  the  sweat  of  poor  men  !  And  my  friend  Wen- 
dell Phillips  (see  Standard  for  Nov.  4)  admonisheth  me 
that  brain-labor  is  overpaid,  and  that  they  who  live  by  it 
are  clothed  in  purple  and  fine  linen  ! 

TO   R.   H.   MANNING. 

December  3, 1871. 
I  can't  trouble  you  now  with  labor  discussions,  and  will 
only  say  how  glad  I  was  to  receive  your  article,  and  that 
I  read  it  with  the  greatest  pleasure.  I  am  thoroughly 
pleased  with  what  you  say  of  the  comparative  uselessness 
of  legislative  restrictions,  the  mischiefs  of  legislative  agita- 
tion with  a  view  to  instantaneous  revolution  in  labor  rela- 
tions, and  the  necessity,  if  we  want  to  have  better  institu- 
tions than  we  now  have,  of  first  "  deserving  them."  You 
say  truly  that  there  can  be  no  "  royal  road  "  to  right  sys- 
tems of  distribution.  I  agree  with  you  that  the  great  need 
is,  of  good  practical  education ;  and  with  all  my  hate  of 
centralized  power,  I  do  think  the  State  should  insist  upon 
educating  the  masses,  in  the  best  way  possible,  for  the  duties 
of  the  citizen. 

TO  MISS   LUCY   OSGOOD. 

October  17,  1872. 
If  you  find  the  book  [the  India"]  attractive  reading  as 
well  as  historically  instructive,  that  greatly  adds  to  my 
comfort  in  thinking  of  its  prospects  in  this  busy  age.  It 
has  cost  me  labor  enough,  that  is  certain  ;  yet  it  is  a  labor 
of  real  love,  combined  with  an  intense  sense  of  a  great  de- 
mand from  the  side  of  spiritual  culture  and  higher  relations 
of  sentiment  and  imagination,  in  the  present  condition  of 
the  races  calling  themselves  "  Christian."  I  hope  I  have 
done  something  to  stimulate  these  forces,  and  help  toward 


MEMOIR.  107 

the  grand  interpretations  of  natural  religion  that  are  yet  to 
come. 

TO   s.   L. 

October  17,  1872. 

Thanks  for  the  kind  favor  of  sending  me  the  College 
CouranL  What  an  appreciative  spirit  the  notice  of  my 
book  shows !  So  large  in  sympathy,  and  so  clear  and  fine 
in  recognition  of  the  best  things  I  have  tried  to  say ;  the 
-  quotations,  too,  very  aptly  selected.  Who  is  the  editor  of 
this  magazine  ?  I  see  he  speaks  with  cordiality  of  Abbot 
and  Voysey.  Right  under  the  windows  of  Old  Yale  have 
we  such  universality  ? 

Have  you  seen  Ripley's  notice  in  the  Tribune  ?  He 
quotes  two  columns  full  and  makes  some  very  friendly  re- 
marks at  the  close.  I  am  glad  everybody  recognizes  that 
the  book  is  for  the  people  as  well  as  for  scholars. 

I  hope  you  got  admission  to  Tyndall  [then  lecturing 
in  Boston].  What  pleasure  there  must  be  in  hearing  him, 
the  poet  of  science  and  the  best  of  demonstrators  on  the 
platform ! 

December  29, 1872. 

This  desperate  cold  snap  paralyzes  one's  very  human- 
ity in  its  pith  and  substance.  Oh  for  the  "  lands  of  sum- 
mer beyond  the  sea  "  ! 

Higginson  came  here  in  a  snow-storm  last  week  and 
spoke,  supperless,  to  a  little  flock  at  the  old  Lyceum  Hall, 
giving  an  entertaining  and  sympathetic  story  of  his  Lon- 
don experiences.  I  had  a  very  pleasant  talk  with  him  of 
European  visits,  personages,  etc. 

I  am  in  doubt  what  to  preach  at  Frothingham's,  but,  on 
the  whole,  I  shall  choose  practical  ethics,  and  try  to  show 
how  every  man  ought  to  be  in  his  true  place,  and  how 
America,  in  her  educational  methods,  denies  and  abjures 
that  sacred  fact.  I  shall  just  go  over  on  Sunday  morning 
from  Brooklyn  to  Lyric  Hall. 

Oriental  Religions  I  hear  nothing  of  in  this  busy  world, 


108  MEMOIR. 

where  books  are  pouring  down  like  a  summer  shower, 
and  men  put  up  their  umbrellas  against  such  big  ones 
as  mine,  as  they  would  against  hailstones  of  the  "  hen's- 
egg  "  species.  Nobody  advertises  the  book  except  Osgood 
in  his  lists ;  but  it  may  be  selling  for  all  that,  and  in  spite 
of  The  Nation.  I  do  not  see  a  word  in  English  literary 
journals  about  it,  and  doubt  now  if  I  shall  do  so  at  all.  I 
have  not  seen  a  copy  of  the  second  edition  yet. 

I  have  just  received  O.  B.  F.'s  fresh  volume,  The  Re- 
ligion of  Humanity.  It  is  very  eloquent,  full  of  pictur- 
esque and  effective  writing,  clear,  strong,  and  tender,  and 
singularly  full  of  the  finest  thoughts  of  the  time.  Have 
you  read  it?  I  would  like  very  much  to  know  how  the 
essay  on  "  Christ "  strikes  you.  I  like  it  the  least  of  the 
whole  on  some  accounts,  though  it  is  one  of  the  most 
striking.  He  thinks  the  Spirit  of  Humanity  is  rightly  to 
be  called  "  the  Christ ;  "  thinks,  too,  Humanity  may  be 
mortal,  perishing  with  the  planet. 

TO  . 

December  30, 1872. 

I  learn  that  the  gentle  sufferer  who  has  so  long  been 
made  happy  by  your  devoted  care,  has  been  called  into 
those  interior  spheres,  where  indeed  the  calmness  and 
sweetness  of  her  spirit  have  already  seemed  to  you  to  be 
dwelling,  as  in  its  constant  home.  Out  of  your  mortal 
sight,  but  still  in  the  arms  of  your  unchangeable  trust  and 
love.     There,  too,  her  home. 

Dear  friends,  the  household  that  was  so  bright  to  me  in 
years  that  have  long  gone  by,  seems,  in  the  shadow  of  this 
sorrow,  over-arched  by  a  serene  and  heavenly  presence, 
sure  as  anything  can  be  to  bring  compensations  in  energy, 
patience,  trust,  and  spiritual  sight,  for  the  outward  loss  you 
must  so  keenly  feel. 

In  the  mysteries  of  our  mortality  what  helpers  like  the 
unexpected,  unpledged  resources  that  come,  only  when  they 


MEMOIR.  109 

are  needed^  out  of  great  hidden  reserves  of  power  within 
us  ?  So  near,  they  prove,  is  an  Infinite  Life  which  father- 
hood and  motherhood  and  all  our  tender  kindredships  are 
given  us  to  suggest,  to  interpret,  to  reveal.  When  I  think 
of  the  loving,  parental  watchfulness  which  long  ago  sur- 
rounded the  invalid  in  her  great  weakness  and  dependence, 
and  the  cheering  and  strengthening  influence  with  which 
she  repaid  it,  spreading  around  her  an  inward  health  in 
such  contrast  with  her  physical  weakness,  and  when  I  re- 
call the  steady  growth  of  her  rare  powers  of  mind  and  con- 
science, of  cheerful  fortitude  and  spiritual  vision,  I  cannot 
but  feel,  that  the  constant  sense  of  this  mastery  over  the 
weakness  of  the  flesh  by  the  vitality  of  the  spirit,  must 
have  been  to  you  all  the  secret  inward  preparation  for  a 
moment  when  you  have  so  much  need  of  its  strong  assur- 
ances of  her  immortality  and  immortal  youth. 

Of  so  many  years  of  mutual  helpfulness  and  pure  sym- 
pathies, how  precious  and  living  the  record  will  be  in  your 
memories !  How  it  will  arouse  and  sustain  your  every 
effort  to  pursue  still  the  home-paths  of  love  and  duty,  on 
which  she  will  still  smile,  and  that  interest  in  all  public 
hopes  and  efforts  of  progress  which  she  must  still  desire 
you  to  feel !  How  the  coming  of  the  unseen  life  will  be 
freed  from  all  shadows,  so  that  it  shall  dawn  at  last  "  famil- 
iar as  your  childhood's  dream  "  in  the  light  of  those  treas- 
ures laid  up  for  you  within  the  veil. 

TO  s.  L. 

May  31,  1873. 

On  the  whole  not  so  satisfactory  a  meeting  [of  the  Free 
Religious  Association]  as  some  others  I  have  attended.  My 
own  performance  in  it  was  a  poor  failure,  but  I  have  writ- 
ten lately  under  some  disadvantages,  and  am  always  out  of 
place  at  popular  conventions.  Gannett,  whom  I  heard  and 
saw  for  the  first  time  yesterday,  pleased  me  very  much. 
.  .  .  K  you  think  of  anything  I  can  do  to  improve  the 
India  for  a  third  edition,  of  the  speedy  need  of  which  I 
am  advised  by  Ticknor,  please  write. 


110  MEMOIR. 

September  28, 1873. 

I  have  been  very  sick  this  whole  summer ;  first  at  An- 
dover  for  a  month  nearly,  then  at  Salem  where  I  had  a  re- 
lapse into  amazing  weakness.  I  could  scarcely  walk  a 
portion  of  the  time,  and  could  eat  nothing,  my  tongue  was 
in  such  a  condition,  but  lived  on  liquids.  But  within  a  few 
days  I  have  begun  to  mend  fast,  and  was  able  day  before 
yesterday  to  go  to  West  Roxbury. 

Do  you  speak  this  coming  winter  at  Horticultural  Hall  ? 
Miss  Stevenson  told  me  that  they  want  me  to  read  my 
lecture  on  Transcendentalism.  And,  —  more  because  of  a 
sort  of  sense  that  such  things  are  just  now  much  to  the 
purpose,  and,  even  if  imperfect  enough,  will  serve  as  a 
needed  testimony  on  the  spiritual  side  against  the  confused 
and  dire  materialism  of  many,  —  more,  I  say,  for  this  rea- 
son than  from  any  desire  I  have  to  re-appear  on  that  or  any 
other  speaking  platform,  I  said,  yes. 

I  am  happy  in  being  shelved  from  pulpit  or  other  similar 
demands,  since  it  gives  me  freedom  for  studies  and  plans  of 
publication  that  are  more  suited  to  my  nature,  and  demand 
undisturbed  labor  for  some  time  to  come.  China  grows 
under  my  hand ;  books  and  researches  and  opportunities 
open  ;  much  is  of  the  highest  interest.  The  Tao-te-king  of 
Lao-tze  grows  grander  as  I  see  its  bearings  on  Chinese  con- 
servatism, and  as  an  indignant  protest  of  the  spirit  against 
the  traditionalism  of  ages.  There  are  Chinese  philosophers, 
too,  whose  ideas  singularly  unite  old  mysticism  with  a  pos- 
itivism and  rationalism  that  brings  them  home  to  the  mod- 
ern experience  we  are  passing  through  to-day.  ...  So  you 
see  I  am  quite  reconciled  to  being  left  out  and  dropped 
from  preaching-desks  and  lecture-stands. 

And  I  have  no  time  for  newspaper  controversies  such  as  I 
see  A wants  to  get  me  upon.  Did  you  see  his  prepos- 
terous interpretation  of  my  saying  (in  the  F.  R.  Association 
essay)  that  God  and  man  are  not  to  be  held  as  essentially 
distinct  existences  external  to  each  other  ?     As  if,  because 


MEMOIR.  Ill 

God  and  man  are  one,  there  can  be  no  distinction  of  In- 
finite and  Finite  as  polarities  within  the  one  divine  life.  I 
do  not  know  whether  it  is  worth  while  to  try  to  set  him 
right.     Nothing  is   ever  gained   by  explaining  what  you 

have  said. 

December  28, 1873. 

Who  will  take  Agassiz's  place  ?  There  are  many  better 
philosophers,  deeper  thinkers,  but  none  with  the  power, 
through  prestige  and  enthusiasm  both,  to  do  so  much  in 
awakening  the  people  to  scientific  studies. 

I  have  been  reading  lately  with  great  interest  two  very 
intellectual  and  liberal  books  by  Morley,  —  Voltaire  and 
Bousseau.  I  have  not  for  a  long  time  seen  such  broad, 
clear,  thoughtful,  suggestive  estimates  of  personal  charac- 
ter. His  writing  God  with  a  small  ^  is  a  curious  anomaly 
in  such  a  man,  and  has  set  me  to  thinking.  Is  it  not  a 
grotesque  sign  of  the  transitional  theology  of  the  time  ? 
Morley  is  a  kind  of  spiritual  positivist,  and  his  mode  of 
dealing  with  men  and  things  is  to  me  extremely  interesting. 

Have  you  read  Martha's  La  Poeme  de  Lucrece?  I 
have  found  that  very  attractive  also.  Lucretius  interests 
me  mor6  and  more,  as  the  great  mind  of  that  age,  and  the 
prophet  of  science,  as  well  as  the  foe  of  the  old  gods. 

January  28,  1874. 

As  usual  I  was  clubbed  and  left  for  dead  by  the  report- 
ers. What  is  the  sense  of  speaking  your  beliefs  to  one  or 
two  hundred  persons,  if  it  but  gives  the  chance  to  make 
you  speak  to  the  newspaper-reading  public  such  silly  plati- 
tudes and  such  utter  falsities  ?  If  they  would  but  let  us 
alone,  it  is  all  I  would  ask.  Think  of  my  being  made  to 
say  that  "  Christianity  was  transcendental,  but  Paul  mate- 
rialistic "  (!)  and  that  "  professional  ideas  are  transcen- 
dental," etc.,  etc. 

Your  sermon  last  Sunday  impressed  me  as  full  of  the 
timeliest  and  clearest  statement  of  the  great  reconciling 
principle  —  which  we  should  call  Spiritual  Pantheism  — 
between  Infinite  Mind  and  Impersonal  Law. 


112  MEMOIR, 

March  22,  1874. 
The  discourse  [on  Charles  Sumner's  death]  came  out  ad- 
mirably from  the  press.  I  see  that  J.  G.  [in  the  Common- 
wealth'] finds  me  guilty  of  "bad  taste"  and  " painfulness " 
in  expressing  my  dissent  from  Mr.  Sumner  on  the  Greeley 
movement.  I  hope  nothing  like  indelicacy  or  harshness 
was  really  suggested  by  any  infelicity  in  my  language  to 
those  who  heard  me.  I  cannot  find  anything  which  I 
think  I  ought  to  alter. 

June,  1874. 

The  F.  R.  A.  proposes  a  course  of  practical  lectures  for 
the  next  winter,  in  which  lecturers  on  opposite  sides  of  each 
question  shall  be  heard  in  succession.  They  want  me  to 
take  one  side  of  the  labor  question  and  Phillips  the  other, 
for  instance.  I  have  objected  to  the  sensational  element 
and  the  apparent  antagonism,  etc.,  which  strike  me  very 
unpleasantly  in  the  plan  (this,  doubtless,  not  meant  wrong- 
ly). I  suppose  they  will  think  me  crotchety  ;  but  how  else 
save  by  "  crotchets  "  shall  one  keep  out  of  this  incessant 
drift  and  pressure  towards  catering  to  popular  tastes  for 
exciting  ways  of  doing  things  ?  Perhaps  it  will  not  strike 
you  just  as  it  does  me. 

I  wish  you  could  have  been  at  the  Commencement  and 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  exercises  this  year.  I  am  just  home,  vi- 
brating with  joy,  first  at  a  charming  disquisition  by  Fenol- 
losa  of  Salem,  of  the  graduating  class,  on  Pantheism,  which 
would  have  cheered  your  soul,  as  would  the  immense  ap- 
plause which  followed  his  unqualified  advocacy  of  Panthe- 
ism in  its  highest  and  purest  form  ;  and,  next,  at  a  noble 
oration  (<I>.  B.  K.)  on  "  The  Relations  of  History,  and  the 
question  how  far  it  has  been  a  Progress,"  by  Professor  C. 
C.  Everett.  I  never  heard  him  before,  and  was  delighted 
both  with  his  matter  and  manner.  He  is  so  thoughtful, 
earnest,  simple,  and  sweet,  and  his  thought  so  clear,  vigor- 
ous, and  vital.  Cranch  gave  a  beautiful  poem,  as  you  might 
expect,  full  of  enthusiasm  and  imagination.  Altogether, 
Cambridsre  seemed  to  me  this  vear  to  be  "  looking  un." 


MEMOIR.  113 

Like  yourself,  I  thought  Arnold's  attempt  to  make  the 
old  Bible  of  the  Hebrews  serve  the  cause  of  Impersonality 
was  audacious  enough.  1  dislike  his  perpetual  mouthing 
of  watchwords,  and  his  spirit  towards  the  two  poor  bishops 
he  was  always  pecking  at  with  extremely  little  sweetness  or 
light.  I  have  just  been  reading  his  later  work  on  German 
Schools,  which  has  a  great  deal  of  interesting  information. 

October  1,  1874. 

Last  Saturday,  such  serene  level  light  on  the  russet 
woods  and  the  still  harvest  fields  filled  the  afternoon  air 
with  a  kind  of  brooding  soul.  I  wonder  if  you  were  out  of 
the  city  crowds  so  as  to  see  and  enjoy  it. 

I  heard  John  Westall  interpret  Kaulbach's  great  picture 
[the  original  cartoon  of  "  the  Reformation  "]  at  the  Spanish 
gallery  rooms,  last  week.  It  was  good  to  hear  the  kind, 
earnest  tones  and  see  the  fine  enthusiasm  for  art  and  poe- 
try, even  if  there  was  a  little  old  theology  mixed  in  which 
jarred  a  little.  The  picture  itself  in  parts  is  fine,  but  sadly 
lacks  ideal  unity. 

So  busy  have  I  been  that  I  have  not  read  Conway  [the 
Sacred  Anthology].  I  was  astounded  to  find  no  recogni- 
tion of  immortality. 

December  22,  1874. 
Oriental  Religions  yields  the  prodigious  sum  of  fifty 
dollars  for  the  year  1874.  .  .  .  Have  you  read  Adams's 
book  on  Democracy  in  France"?  His  theology  crops  out 
in  rather  unfair  judgments  of  Voltaire  and  others,  but 
he  understands  the  French  character  very  well,  and  the 
book  will  help  along  the  movement,  which  I  am  glad  to  see 
is  gaining  strength,  toward  holding  American  "  equality  "  to 
duties  as  well  as  rights. 

North  Andovek,  March  2,  1875. 
This  is  an  "  old-fashioned  "  winter.     Shut  up  day  after 
day  to  a  prospect  of  white  fields  and  bare  woods,  with  dis- 
8 


114  MEMOIR. 

tant  houses  apparently  unpeopled,  —  varying  the  scene  by  a 
daily  walk  to  the  railroad  station  to  get  my  newspapers, — 
I  learn  the  blessings  of  having  a  task  that  does  n't  require 
city  sights  and  locomotion.  I  work  away  at  an  advantage. 
But  to-day  what  a  triumphant  assertion  of  the  royalty  of 
winter,  —  a  great  white  throne  ! 

I  am  glad  Legge's  Mencius  is  out.  Prosaic  as  it  is,  we 
have  nothing  else  thereon  half,  nor  a  tenth  part,  so  good. 
So  I  shall  get  on  now  very  well  with  the  "  classic  '*  part  of 
my  materials. 

North  Andover,  May  13,  1875. 

I  have  just  finished  my  chapter  on  "  How  the  Chinese 
*  Make  History.' "  There  is  no  encouragement  for  printing 
another  volume  in  the  sale  of  the  first.  But  the  pleasure 
as  well  as  the  duty  of  writing  it  remain  not  materially  dif- 
ferent, I  think,  from  what  they  would  be  if  such  encour- 
agement existed.  This  spring  and  summer,  I  have  pretty 
fully  worked  up  the  topics  of  Language  and  Literature, 
Poetry,  the  Shi-king,  the  Shu-hing,  and  the  History  in 
general,  from  my  MS.  notes  which  all  lie  ready  to  be  used, 
to  the  end  of  the  work.  Religion  and  Philosophy  are  now 
about  all  that  remain,  as  the  closing  up  of  the  subject. 

I  am  reading  a  new  and  very  interesting  work  by  De 
Coulanges,  author  of  La  Cite  Antique,  on  the  Political  In- 
stitutions of  Ancient  France.  It  is  in  the  clearest  and 
most  incisive  French.  I  have  never  read  so  complete  and 
satisfactory  an  acccount  of  the  old  Roman  Empire  and  its 
administration.  It  is  quite  original,  and  shows  how  naturally 
the  Roman  imperium  grew  up  out  of  the  demand  of  men 
in  that  age  to  be  governed,  and  how  perfectly  it  met  the 
wants  of  the  world.  Also,  how  it  contained  the  germs  of 
all  subsequent  European  history  in  matters  of  government 
and  social  institutions. 

March  1,  1876. 

Dr.  Felix  Adler  called  to  see  me,  yesterday,  and  talk 
over  his  proposed  essays  on  Hebrew  Theism.     I  was  much 


MEMOIR.  115 

pleased  with  him,  —  a  live  Jewish  radical   of  culture  and 
apparently  much  sweetness  and  reverence. 

I  attended  on  Monday  the  funeral  of  Dr.  Ahlborn's 
youngest  child,  the  loveliest  little  fellow,  swept  away  by 
this  terrible  scourge  of  diphtheria.  Dr.  Bartol  spoke  very 
tenderly  and  beautifully. 

His  own  words,  too,  on  that  occasion,  —  preserved 
by  those  they  comforted,  —  were  most  tender  and 
affectionate  as  well  as  full  of  sustaining  faith  and 
hope.     The  following  were  a  part  of  them  :  — 

"  The  beautiful  young  life  that  is  lifted  out  of  our  sight 
into  the  heavenly  fold  is  very  dear  to  me,  and  I  shall  share 
the  pleasant  memories  in  which  it  will  be  enshrined,  and 
that  silence  of  thought  in  which  the  benedictions  of  the 
anorels  fall.  We  would  lift  our  thoughts  above  the  shad- 
ows  of  mortality,  and  the  outward  semblance  of  death.  .  .  . 

MEDITATIONS. 

Through  all  the  mysteries  of  our  earthly  lot,  we  would 
ever  feel  ourselves  embosomed  in  the  Infinite  Strength  and 
Peace,  that  with  fatherly  wisdom  and  motherly  tenderness 
upholds  and  guides  us,  like  stars  in  the  sky,  through  our 
changes  of  night  and  day,  of  sunshine  and  storm. 

We  would  strive  ever  to  commit  ourselves  to  the  serene 
and  perfect  laws  that  guide  our  human  destiny,  assured  that 
what  our  nature  appoints  must  be  better  for  us  than  aught 
else  we  can  desire  or  dream. 

Whether  we  walk  in  the  morning  light,  or  in  the  night 
shadows,  —  over,  around,  and  beneath  us  are  spread  these 
Everlasting  Arms.  .  .  .  How  strong  the  assurance  that 
what  is  bound  up  with  our  life  and  makes  a  dear  part  of 
our  being,  cannot  be  wholly  lost ;  that  it  must  answer  to 
the  love  in  which  it  is  more  deeply  than  ever  enshrined  ! 
How  real  becomes  the  unseen  world,  no  longer  unfamiliar, 
but  warm  with  the  treasures  and  light  of  home !     How  we 


116  MEMOIR. 

look  through  the  half-opened  gates,  into  its  glory  and  its 
peace,  where  the  innocence  and  beauty  of  childhood  must 
dwell  in  the  life  of  which  they  are  the  image ;  and  the  ties 
that  here  seem  broken  must  be  preserved  in  the  love  that 
made  them  ours ;  and  the  powers  we  would  have  trained 
here  must  be  unfolded  in  the  same  care  that  inspired  our 
striving,  and  will  not  let  it  be  in  vain.  .  .  . 

Nor  would  we  forget  that  by  this  tranquil  mystery 
which  we  call  death,  we  are  brought  the  closer  to  a  sense 
of  an  infinite  calm  of  unchangeable  good  in  which  we  must 
confide ;  on  whose  bosom,  with  our  beloved  that  have  fallen 
asleep  therein,  we  can  rest,  sure  of  compensations  flowing 
from  the  Life  that  can  comprehend  the  depth  of  these  affec- 
tions it  has  implanted,  and  the  bitterness  of  earthly  loss.  .  .  . 

IX. 

Meanwhile,  in  1876,  a  change  had  taken  place  in 
his  circumstances.  The  death  of  his  father,  breaking 
up  the  home  in  Salem,  rendered  it  desirable  that  he 
should  take  up  his  residence  on  the  ancestral  farm  in 
North  Andover,  which  was  bequeathed  to  him  and 
his  younger  sister.  The  old  homestead,  which  had 
been  put  into  good  condition,  stands  about  a  mile 
from  the  village,  at  the  junction  of  three  roads,  its 
front  windows  commanding  a  wide  and  pleasant  out- 
look. In  the  rear  stretch  the  farm-fields  out  toward 
the  woodlands.  On  a  small  green  before  the  house 
stand  two  immense  elm-trees.  The  country  around 
is  gently  rolling,  with  many  green  lanes  and  fine 
views  from  the  hill-tops.  Here  he  established  him- 
self, setting  up  his  library  in  a  western  chamber. 
And  here  he  passed  the  remaining  years  of  his  life ; 
keeping  more  and  more  closely  at  home,  faithful  to 
his  work  and  his  duties;  welcoming  the  visits  of  his 
friends;  gratefully  enjoying  all  the  good  that  came 


MEMOIR.  117 

to  him  ;  cheerfully  and  uncomplainingly  bearing  his 
cross.  He  interested  himself  in  carrying  on  the 
farm,  taking  part  sometimes  with  his  own  hands.  I 
remember  an  experimental  cranberry  patch  which  he 
showed  me  with  some  pride.  This  out-of-door  life 
soon  told  favorably  on  his  health,  if,  or  because,  it 
drew  him  away  a  little  from  his  studies.  When  he 
came  to  see  me  from  time  to  time  in  Cambridge, 
bringing  with  him  often  some  installment  of  MSS. 
for  the  printers,  I  gladly  noticed  that  he  seemed 
better  and  brighter.  His  studies  went  on,  his  gen- 
eral reading,  his  correspondence ;  occasionally  he 
preached  for  his  neighbor  and  friend,  Mr.  Clifford. 
At  times  his  studies  were  interrupted  or  made  diffi- 
cult by  recurrence  of  attacks  of  sickness  ;  but  with 
him  ill-health  was  never  an  excuse  for  idleness. 

TO   s.   L. 

September  17,  1876. 
My  little  group  of  Swiss  ware  —  chamois  great  and 
small,  and  old  peasant  people  —  stands  in  idyllic  rest  over 
the  time-piece  in  the  new  study,  and  serves  to  suggest  en- 
during moments  in  this  swift  flight  of  days.  My  summer 
has  been  very  busy  with  its  great  change  of  place,  occupa- 
tions, and  duties.  My  library  is  arranged  in  the  delightful 
old  chamber,  looking  out  under  our  grand  elms  over  the 
hills  and  through  the  valley,  straight  across  the  far  sounds 
and  softened  images  of  the  city  of  looms  and  spindles 
[Lawrence]  to  lovely  ideal  hills  that  rest  in  the  sunset 
glow.  And  here  in  these  autumnal  days  is  a  wood-fire  in 
the  Franklin  stove.  Farm  work  and  cares  manifold  some- 
what interrupt  the  movement  of  Oriental  Religions.  Through 
these  practical  and  positive  surroundings,  I  find  myself  quite 
as  much  involved  in  the  elements  and  functions  that  make 
up  actual  life,  as  in  what  seemed  a  larger  sphere.     And  I  am 


118  MEMOIR. 

rapidly  learning  to  measure  work  by  its  "  qualitative  quan- 
tum," as  Hegel  calls  the  essence  of  things,  rather  than  by  its 
relations  with  the  world.  What  I  shall  miss  will  be  certain 
city  opportunities,  so  pleasant  to  enjoy  with  friends.  .  .   . 

I  confess  nothinor  has  so  disgusted  me  as  the  conduct  of 
the  so-called  Independents,  and  the  persistent  abuse  of  the 
President  [Grant],  who,  in  my  judgment,  would  at  this 
moment  make  a  better  man  for  the  coming  struggles  than 
Hayes.  I  find  that,  on  every  point  where  he  has  been  as- 
sailed, waiting  for  a  fair  verdict  has  convinced  me  that  he 
was  nearer  right  than  his  adversaries. 

1876. 

I  want  to  show  you  the  petty  improvements  I  have 
made  here  this  year ;  only  in  part  of  the  Hibernian  style, 
"  main  strength  and  ignorance,"  whereof  I  have  consider- 
ably more  of  this  one  than  of  that  other.  I  have,  too,  a 
pretty  fair  showing  to  make  of  Oriental  matters,  being  on. 
the  final  copy  of  the  latter  end  chapters.  ...  I  have  no 
invitations  to  supply  pulpits,  and  am  quite  content  without 
this  public  work,  to  which  I  am  more  and  more  unsuited  in 
these  days. 

Like  you,  I  am  annoyed  by  the  excessive  minute  analysis 
of  mental  states  and  personal  positions  in  Daniel  Deronda. 
I  think  the  excess  of  this  is  more  conspicuous  than  in  her 
other  books.  But  how  wonderful  it  is  !  Her  dramatic 
power,  by  which  I  mean  the  self-abdicating,  other-mind-rep- 
resenting faculty,  seems  to  me  nearest  Shakspeare's  of  any 
writer  in  the  English  tongue  in  the  present  generation.  I 
have  not  yet  finished  the  book.  But  I  expect  tragedy  and 
the  sense  of  disappointed  ideals,  with  the  old  grand  Greek 
pointing  up  through  all  to  the  nobility  of  that  which  fails 
on  earth. 

I  have  lately  been  studying  the  Pessimism  of  Schopen- 
hauer in  various  books.  The  most  inconsistent  and  self-de- 
structive syncretism  that  was  ever  called  a  system  ;  yet  full 
of  interest,  from  its  points  of  attachment  to  other  systems, 
and  from  the  genius  that  breaks  out  in  points  and  jets. 


MEMOIR.  119 

February  4,  1877. 

I  was  especially  sorry  not  to  find  you  in  on  Friday,  for  I 
was  on  my  way  to  Wilson's  [the  printer]  with  my  big 
Chinese  baby ;  a  half-scared  carpet-bagger,  burdened  in 
body  and  mind,  and  I  wanted  a  bit  of  encouragement.  Do 
you  know,  this  book  is  coming  to  light  without  hint,  sug- 
gestion, or  mechanical  aid  from  living  man  or  woman  ? 
Not  a  step  in  the  process  could  I  commit  to  any  one  but 
myself ;  not  from  choice,  but  from  the  necessity  of  the  case. 
But  before  putting  some  fifty  pages  or  more  in  Wilson's 
hands,  I  wanted  to  talk  with  you  on  a  few  points.  If  you 
thought  I  was  wise  and  not  foolish,  I  should  have  trudged 
to  the  printers  with  a  lighter  heart. 

The  winter  has  proved  hard,  here  in  the  country,  and  the 
old  farm-house  could  not  be  made  tight  this  first  year.  My 
stove  has  worked  badly,  and  I  have  had  to  worry  through 
the  coldest  part  of  the  winter.  Eskimo-fashion,  I  have  built 
a  hut  within  my  Arctic  world,  a  caboose  around  my  fire. 

I  have  been  reading  Maine's  Early  History  of  Institu- 
tions. Like  all  his  works,  it  is  full  of  meat,  close  packed 
with  mature,  suggestive  thought,  and  beautifully  complete. 
No  modern  writer  on  such  matters  compares  with  him.  I 
am  now  in  the  middle  of  the  new  book.  Supernatural  Re- 
ligion, which  is  a  very  keen  argument  against  miracles, 
and  a  wonderful  storehouse  of  critical  and  exegetical  au- 
thorities on  the  New  Testament  books  and  early  Church 
writers.  These  things  in  the  midst  of  Chinese  studies, 
which,  chapter  by  chapter,  are  pushing  along. 

June  9,  1877. 
I  sent  the  last  proofs  [of  the  China']  in  from  Boston 
yesterday,  and  came  home  with  a  sense  of  lifted  cares,  till  I 
began  to  think  of  the  probable  fate  of  the  heavy  craft  I  was 
launching  before  the  hasty  practical  American  world  that 
will  only  tolerate  what  it  can  measure,  and  absorb,  with  a 
"  touch  and  go."  ...  I  mean  to  be  prepared  for  the  evil 


120  MEMOIR. 

fame  of  attempting  so  much,  without  knowledge  of  the  forty 
thousand  characters  of  the  Chinese  script.  If  I  knew 
these,  I  should  know  nothing  else.  In  the  way  of  psycho- 
logical interpretation,  I  should  be  simply  nothing. 

TO   R.    H.    MANNING. 

July  7,  1877. 

It  is  refreshing  to  see  your  familiar  graphy^  and  the  long- 
ing comes  over  me,  so  often  felt,  for  a  good  chat  in  the  pleas- 
ant old  home  in  Clinton  Avenue.  .  .  It  would  be  vain 
for  me  to  tantalize  myself  in  the  old  bookstores.  I  have 
just  sold  out  stocks  to  pay  the  stereotyper's  bill  of  nearly 
two  thousand  dollars  for  Ghina^  which  I  fear  you  will  think 
a  great  folly  in  a  shelved  man  with  an  income  scarce  able 
to  keep  him.  Well,  it  does  look  like  a  "  tempting  o'  Prov- 
idence," I  allow,  to  write  books  that  most  people  will  vote 
dull  at  sight  —  to  spend  so  much  in  getting  them  out  with 
little  prospect  of  demand.  All  I  can  say  in  excuse  is  — 
that  I  cannot  help  it.  And  if  I  get  a  good  word  back  from 
friends  like  you,  it  is  a  reward  worth  living  and  working 
for.  You  will  see,  at  least,  that  I  have  not  been  lazy,  and 
that  I  have  had  a  purpose  in  some  earnest,  poorly  as  I  suc- 
ceed in  showing  it  to  the  many. 

I  may  get  a  chance  to  run  on  to  Brooklyn  some  time 
this  summer.  But  you  know  what  a  farmer's  life  is  ;  and 
I  have  more  than  that  to  look  after. 

TO   s.   L. 

July  16,  1877. 
Wilson  is  paid  by  the  sale  of  stocks,  and  Osgood  has  done 
very  well  in  advertising.  The  notices,  so  far,  are  excellent. 
Ripley  in  the  Tribune  is  admirable ;  he  credits  me  with  ab- 
solute freedom  from  partisan  spirit,  and  from  attempts  to 
get  up  a  case  for  private  theories,  and  with  writing  in  the 
pure  interests  of  truth.  I  wrote  him  an  acknowledgment. 
...  I  have  no  fears  but  you  will  say  all  that  is  fittest  [in 
the  Atlantic\. 


MEMOIR.  121 

I  wish  I  could  come  to  the  mountains,  but  must  give  up 
all  that  sort  of  thing  for  home  cares  and  duties,  and  the 
stress  that  comes  of  literary  expenses.  It  would  be  de- 
lightful to  climb  the  hills  and  siesta  in  the  glens  with  you, 
as  of  old  at  Willoughby,  and  still  better  in  blessed  Switzer- 
land. Perhaps  the  good  days  will  come  about  again,  in 
the  spirals  of  time. 

Are  you  not  coming  to  see  my  elms  and  hills  ?  I  am  iu 
the  midst  of  deadly  war  on  the  Colorado  beetle,  who  fights 
to  the  end  of  the  chapter.  I  have  spent  days  in  clearing 
slugs  from  my  vines,  but  I  have  saved  them.  Haying  is 
over,  with  successful  results.  I  find  the  Andover  people 
charmingly  kind.  Clifford  is  a  treasure ;  I  hear  him 
preach  with  great  enjoyment,  and  he  is  personally  even 
more  than  his  rare  preaching.  Do  come  and  see  me ;  the 
woods  and  prospects  ask  me  where  you  are. 

February  19,  1878. 

I  am  working  away,  as  you  will  believe,  not  in  pros- 
pect of  any  reward,  but  the  doing  of  my  own  work  and  the 
good  word  of  a  few  friends.  This  theme  is  largest  of  all. 
I  should  call  it  Iran  rather  than  Persia,  but  shall  not.  I 
am  back  among  the  cuneiform  tablets  and  the  sources,  as 
I  find  more  and  more,  of  the  religious  history  of  the  world, 
and  especially  of  the  great  "  historic  faiths." 

Winter  wears  beautifully  on,  with  its  prodigality  of  sun- 
shine, and  its  spice  of  flying  snows,  and  its  wide  white  pros- 
pects by  day  and  cold  clear  moonlights. 

Would  that  the  gift  were  in  this  helpless  tongue  of 
mine  to  speak  the  right  word  in  these  wretched  political 
abysses  and  be  heard  ! 

May  26,  1878. 
For  me,  farm-labors  use  up  my  energies,  I  find,  so  far 
as  sometimes  to  interfere  seriously  with  my  disposition  for 
literary  work.     I  am  learning  the  arts  of  limitation,  how- 


122  MEMOIB. 

ever,  and  am  well  along  in  Assyrian,  Babylonian,  and  the 
rest  of  late  Iranian  discoveries.  The  interest  of  these  cu- 
neiform revelations  in  their  bearinor  on  Western  relictions 
—  which  I  find  nobody,  so  far,  among  the  investigators  has 
any  idea  of  —  is  surpassing.  I  wish  I  had  you  here  for  a 
day  or  two,  at  the  least,  that  you  might  see  whether  I  dove- 
tail agriculture  and  literature  respectably.  ...  At  all 
events,  I  am  happy  in  farming  and  writing,  and  glad  to  see 
other  men  get  on  to  more  purpose  where  they  are  fitted  to 
succeed.  A  special  gift  is  that  of  the  preacher,  and  a  glo- 
rious opportunity,  on  purely  independent  ground. 

TO    E.    H.    ilANXIXG. 

July  1,  1878. 
L.  wrote  of  pleasant  talks  with  you  about  public  affairs 
and  the  hopeful  way  in  which  you  looked  at  them.     There 
is  need  enough  of  affirmative  judgments  now.    Some  things 
might  teach  us  the  meaning  of  Shelley's  counsel  — 

..."  to  hope,  till  hope  creates 
From  its  o^vn  wreck  the  thing  it  contemplates." 

It  is  a  mercy  that  we  have  seen  the  end  of  this  Congress, 
scandalous  as  the  last  scenes  were.  I  think  we  must  have 
touched  bottom  now,  and  shall  look  for  re-actions  to  finan- 
cial and  moral  sanity  as  well  as  political. 

I  still  hold  my  Turkish  sympathies  as  against  the  co- 
lossal Raider  of  the  nations,  and  only  find  fault  with  Eng- 
land that  she  did  not  sopner  put  her  trident  across  the  spear 
of  the  centaur  Cossack  galloping  on  to  St.  Sophia.  (See 
Nast  in  Harpers  Weekly.)  He  is  mad  with  drinking  that 
blood-broth  of  "  Peter's  Will."  I  think,  as  matter  of 
European  policy  and  of  the  interests  of  civilization,  that  the 
Turks  will  be  more  fit  to  govern  the  many  races  of  the 
Ottoman  Empire,  and  more  likely  to  maintain  religious  lib- 
erty and  constitutional  government  .  .  .  than  the  Russians, 
whose  church  is  the  most  intolerant  in  the  world. 


MEMOIR.  123 

TO   S.   L. 

August  18,  1878. 

I  am  sweltering  in  summer  heat,  haying,  gathering, 
watching  imruly  cattle,  trying  to  keep  my  lawns  neat  and 
my  roadsides  pleasant,  warring  against  Cossack  hordes  of 
insects,  while  making  all  the  moments  possible  for  the 
ideal  world  of  Persia,  Assyria,  Babylon,  and  the  evolution 
of  Religions  out  of  the  Fire-mist  of  Iran.  Is  not  that  a 
function  for  a  shelved  preacher  after  all  ?  Sometimes,  when 
I  read  the  daily  news  and  see  what  the  "  Hayes  policy  " 
is  doing  for  the  solid  South,  and  what  the  Butlers  and 
Kearnys  are  trying  to  do  with  the  ignorant  classes  of  the 
West  and  the  East,  I  wish  I  had  a  thousand  tongues  in- 
stead of  none  at  all. 

For  what  is  called  public  work  I  have  small  respect. 
The  noise  comes  to  very  little,  and  the  ebb  of  culture  aud 
honor  in  our  American  politics,  literature,  and  trade,  must 
go  on,  doubtless,  for  its  day.  Reaction  is  salvation,  and  it 
will  come ;  and  when  it  comes,  shall  we  not  see  better 
things  than  the  rule  of  the  blind  led  by  the  base  ? 

How  I  should  enjoy  talking  with  you  of  Germantown 
and  the  new  expei»iences  !  It  has  been  vain  for  me  to  think 
of  seeing  you  there.  I  am  bound  closely  to  my  perch. 
Possibly  in  October  I  shall  run  up  to  the  hills,  the  everlast- 
ing hills,  that  will  wait  for  us  as  long  as  we  desire.  .  .  .  The 
elms  and  the  green  hills  here  are  so  luxuriant  and  magnifi- 
cent, this  rainy  summer,  that  I  am  ashamed  to  ask  for  bet- 
ter things  of  the  mountains  and  the  sea-shore. 

Wasson  wrote  a  review  of  China  for  the  North  Amer- 
ican, which  the  editor  accepted,  kept  it  six  months,  and  at 
last  sent  W.  the  money  and  declined  to  print  it  at  all. 
Triibner  advises  me  to  print  a  cheap  edition  for  the  Eng- 
lish market.  I  don't  like  the  idea  for  such  a  book,  and  am 
willing  to  let  it   go  altogether. 


124  MEMOIR. 

TO    R.    H.   MANNING. 

January  6,  1879. 

Alas  that  the  "  holidays  "  should  have  passed  and  brought 
no  pleasant  Brooklyn  days.  As  one  grows  older,  his  feet 
are  weighted  with  other  leads  than  those  of  age ;  and  his 
fetters  hold  him  back  from  ways  he  is  still  fresh  and  strong 
for  treading.  I  had  intended  to  accomplish  this  second  half 
of  my  summer  rambling  immediately  on  returning  from  the 
mountains,  but  found  my  plan  must  be  abandoned.  By  the 
way,  my  little  raid  on  the  Franconia  Hills  and  up  and 
down  the  [White  Mountain]  Notch  on  that  grand  air-line, 
—  if  it  be  not  rather  on  eagle's  wings  —  was  delightful. 
If  you  ever  get  leisure  for  a  ride  a  little  beyond  the  trav- 
eled tr£|,ck,  in  our  New  England  Switzerland,  don't  fail  to 
go  to  Sugar  Hill  in  Franconia,  where  a  real  mountain  house 
(Goodiiow's)  puts  you  at  the  right  focal  distance  from  the 
two  great  ranges.  I  caught  the  foliage  of  the  Notch  in  the 
very  moment  of  its  transfiguration,  and  looked  back  from 
Conway  in  a  splendid  moonlight  upon  the  first  snows  of 
Mt.  Washington.  As  we  live  by  the  sharp  contrasts  of 
Nature  and  Life,  I  wanted  directly  to  plunge  into  the  roar 
of  New  York.     Was  n't  it  natural  ? 

When  Byrant  died,  I  thought  how  much  I  had  received 
from  those  two  poems  of  his,  so  exquisite  both,  and  yet  so 
different,  —  Green  River  and  the  Hymn  of  the  City.  From 
my  boyhood,  both  have  been  singing  their  way  through  my 
experiences  in  country  and  town,  by  the  trout-stream  and  in 
the  street,  and  even  made  up  between  them  a  kind  of  nat- 
ural music  for  the  study  itself.  Poetry  is  the  true  mystic, 
and  makes  all  times  and  scenes  flow  together  into  one. 

My  watches  about  the  "  Sacred  Fire  "  of  Iran  are  prov- 
ing attractive,  as  I  expected ;  though  there  are  many  shad- 
ows flitting  round  those  far  mountain  altars  that  it  is  not 
easy  to  grasp  and  hold  fast.  The  worst  of  studying  the 
Avesta  literature  is  that  it  is  still  so  far  from  being  satisfac- 


MEMOIR.  125 

torily  translated,  though  five  or  six  of  the  best  Orientalists 
in  the  world  have  tried  their  hands  at  the  work  ;  and  we 
have  here  very  little  outside  help  from  contemporary  his- 
tory. Gleams  of  light  and  beauty  tantalize  one  through 
the  mists  that  no  linguistic  astronomer  has  yet  resolved. 
But  the  grand  threads  are  traceable  that  bind  the  Western 
religions  to  the  Iranian  hearth. 

You  "  sometimes  wish  that  you  were  a  student."  I  am 
sure  that  you  could  have  done  nothing  better  than  what 
you  have  brought  about  in  active  spheres  ;  even  though 
you  had  "  wagged  your  pow  "  in  a  pulpit.  You  would 
have  been  the  first  to  make  mince-meat  of  the  clacky  hand- 
organ-men  of  the  creeds.  No  book  culture  would  have 
kept  you  from  the  worship  of  Law,  natural  and  spiritual 
(if  you  will  allow  the  bad  antithesis,  for  bad  it  is,  —  physi- 
cal and  spiritual  rather).  Certainly,  you  would  have  been 
logical  enough  to  throw  overboard  the  miracle,  and  broadly 
intellectual  enough  to  dismiss  the  narrow  personalities  of 
the  creed.  By  the  way,  if  you  want  to  see  what  a  hotch- 
pot mess  can  be  poured  and  simmered  together  on  a  plat- 
form, read  one  —  not  more  will  I  ask  —  of  Cook's  fulmina- 
tions,  ycleped  Monday  Lectures. 

Russia,  I  think,  must  be  reflecting  by  this  time  on  the 
question  whether,  under  home  circumstances,  the  raid  on 
Turkey  was  the  wisest  thing  she  could  have  done.  A  few 
concessions  [at  home]  to  liberty  and  the  "  constitutional 
government"  she  was  so  determined  Turkey  should  not 
enjoy,  might  have  made  Nihilism  and  Young  Russia  in  the 
universities  more  tractable.  I  must  say  I  cannot  share  the 
Gladstone  fever  of  so  many  English  Liberals.  Beacons- 
field  is  no  saint  and  no  model,  but  in  this  matter  I  find  my- 
self going  strongly  his  way.  Between  the  Jew  and  the 
Evangelical  —  which  is  quite  another  matter  —  I  think  you 
would  guess  which  is  theologically  nearer  my  notions. 
Beaconsfield  is,  however,  not  much  of  a  Jew  as  to  belief. 
But  speaking  of  Jews,  did  you  see  that  magnificent  shaking 


126  MEMOIR. 

of  Carlyle  —  till,  I  should  think,  his  teeth  must  have  chat- 
tered ill  his  head  —  by  one  Edward  Solomon,  in  the  New 
York  Herald^  I  believe  Carlyle  had  asked  bow  long  Eng- 
land "  was  to  have  a  miserable  Jew  dancing  on  her  belly," 
and  this  was  the  answer.  I  think  I  should  hold  my  tongue 
ever  after,  if  I  had  been  so  answered. 

...  As  a  whole,  the  family  "  go  in  "  for  the  letter  game ; 
only  glad  sometimes  to  crave  a  mitigation  of  its  length, 
when  the  pool  is  desperately  full  of  unmanageable  "issues." 

TO    S.    L. 

March  26,  1879. 
I  did  not  know  "Weiss  so  intimately  as  many,  but  I  feel  a 
sense  of  great  personal  as  well  as  public  loss.  That  mag- 
nificent imagination  and  noble  instinct  of  liberty  and  grow- 
ing clearness  of  vision  always  directed  to  the  future,  and 
that  splendid  battle-call  to  the  best,  —  how  we  shall  miss  it 
all  in  the  coming  days,  amidst  public  degeneracy  and  the 
turning  away  of  men's  minds  from  noble  ideals  !  He  had 
the  divine  madness,  the  prophetic  cry ;  a  consuming  fire  of 
moral  indignation,  and  the  tenderest  pity ;  the  abandon  of 
genius,  and  the  subtle,  delicious  humor  that  saints  are  al- 
most sure  to  lack.  He  illumines  the  forward  track  for 
all  of  us.     I,  for  one,  "  cannot  make  him  dead." 

April  14,  1879. 

The  warm  wind  bringing  spring  haze  and  birds,  and  the 
stir  of  the  sod  greets  us  to-day.  Soon  the  dagger  of  Jam- 
shid  must  be  plunged  into  the  ground,  following  the  sharper 
and  mightier  edge  of  the  sunbeam.  I  really  see  the  affinity 
of  agriculture  with  Zoroastrian  symbolism,  and  find  the  two 
ends  of  my  work  meet ! 

June  29,  1879. 

Your  warm  interest  in  my  "  Transcendentalism  "  [in  the 
Radical  Review'^  was  indeed  a  gratification.  Frothingham 
wrote  me  at  the  time  a  most  enthusiastic  letter  declaring 


MEMOIR.  127 

that  if  that  was  Transcendentalism,  he  was  a  Transcenden- 

talist.     And  C ,  who  is  now  groping  in  the  half-light 

of  John  Stuart  Mill  and  Jeremy  Bentham,  and  speaks  of 
Transcendentalism  as  "  a  star  gone  by,"  wrote  me  cordially 
though  not  j  ust  to  the  same  effect.  Stevens  gave  it  the  warm- 
est recognition,  except,  perhaps,  Wasson's.  I  mention  F. 
and  C.  only  as  illustrations  of  the  change  that  is  going  on  ; 
the  drift,  I  call  it,  of  American  radicalism  into  organization, 
reliance  on  numbers,  utilities,  outward  forces,  experience 
included,  as  contrasted  with  personal,  interior,  ideal  values. 
O.  B.  F.'s  implication  [in  his  farewell  sermon]  that  the 
old  demand  for  individual  power  and  purpose  had  had  its 
day,  needs  more  to  explain  it  than  his  own  sense  of  having 
said  all  he  had  to  say,  in  twenty  years  speaking,  to  one 
people  —  as  you  put  it.  I  look  upon  his  shift  of  emphasis 
as  part  of  a  drift,  as  I  said,  into  which  the  radical  mind  of 
America  is  moving.  ...  I  am  pegging  away  at  Assyria 
and  the  farm. 

October  19,  1879. 

I  read  the  introduction  to  Max  MuUer's  new  series  of 
Translations  of  the  Oriental  Scriptures,  and  did  not  like  it 
at  all.  He  entirely  ignores  the  valuable  translations  which 
have  already  been  made ;  and  I  was' especially  amazed  that 
in  this  first  volume,  which  is  devoted  to  the  Hindu  Upa- 
nishadsj  he  should  have  made  no  mention  of  Roer's  pre- 
vious translation  of  them  printed  in  the  Bihliotheca  Indica 
at  Calcutta  many  years  ago,  which  you  may  remember  I 
used  in  my  India.  This  is  as  bad  as  Dr.  Beal's  saying,  in 
his  extraordinary  review  of  my  China  in  the  Nation,  that 
these  philosophical  writings  have  never  been  translated ! 

I  am  making  much  use  of  a  French  translation  of  the 
A  vesta  by  Harlez,  which  strikes  me  as  more  careful  and 
thorough,  as  well  as  more  comprehensible  than  the  others. 
I  have  also  used  Haug  and  Spiegel.  Bleek,  you  know, 
simply  copies  Spiegel,  whose  method,  taking  the  commen- 
tators for  his  guide  to  the  mysteries  of  the  old  Bactrian 


128  MEMOIR. 

language,  is  opposed  by  Haug,  and  appears  rather  question- 
able. Spiegel's  great  work,  Erdnische  Alterthumshunde, 
is  a  vast  mine  which  I  have  explored,  as  I  did  Lassen's 
corresponding  work  on  India ;  but  it  lacks  philosophical 
value,  as,  in  fact,  do  all  books  on  the  old  Oriental  Dualism. 
I  am  at  work  now  upon  Mani,  the  terrible  bugbear  of  the 
Christian  world  down  to  the  twelfth  century.  To  be  a 
Manichean  was  worse  than  to  be  a  Jew,  and  to  meet  a 
more  cruel  fate.  Yet  Mani's  aim  was  universal  and  eclec- 
tic, and  the  ascetic  morality  of  his  followers  as  good  as 
any  of  their  time. 

TO    R.    H.   MANNING. 

February  22,  1880. 

Our  friend  Chadwick  has  gained  golden  opinions  by  his 
last  book.  I  enjoyed  the  brave  spirit  and  the  graceful  and 
forcible  style,  and  found  multitudes  of  fine  things  in  it  which 
he  puts  in  that  spontaneous  poetic  way,  always  so  charming 
to  me.  He  meets  many  of  the  profoundest  problems  that 
none  of  us  can  "  boult  to  the  bran  ; "  and  I  do  not  find  all 
his  conclusions  and  explanations  satisfactory.  I  wrote  him 
especially  about  his  change  in  regard  to  Transcendentalism, 
which  I  don't  think  he  states  at  all  as  I  should  state  the 
doctrine. 

In  fact,  the  disciples  of  "  science  '*  and  of  "intuition,"  of 
"  transcendentalism  "  and  "  experience,'*  have  in  general, 
it  seems  to  me,  but  little  comprehension  of  each  others' 
ideas.  The  whole  subject  stands  in  need  of  that  prelimi- 
nary course  of  dejinitions  which  Plato  said  was  necessary  to 
all  discussion,  and  without  which,  discussion  would  be  end- 
less and  profitless.  Not  that  there  is  no  difference  between 
the  position  of  the  two  sides:  there  is  probably  a  considerable 
difference,  and  one  that  has  lasted  through  two  thousand 
years  and  more.  But,  the  points  of  difference  not  being 
seen,  no  mutual  influence  nor  understanding  is  possible. 

Everything,  almost,  in  our  present  heady  way  of  per- 


MEMOIR.  129 

sonal  dispute  and  platform  extempore  appeal  to  multitudes 
who  are  unfamiliar  with  general  views  of  the  subject,  is  in 
a  muddle  of  words  and  phrases  extremely  agonizing  to  those 
who  try  to  use  words  in  their  strict  and  rational  meaning. 
The  style  of  most  writing  is  newspaperish ;  and  the  main 
point  with  the  writer  is  that  which  the  newspaper  leading- 
article  has  always  in  view,  —  how  to  keep  the  attention  of 
unthinking  people  up  to  the  mark  of  following  something, 
by  all  devices  of  sharp,  startling,  or  antagonistic  notions,  a 
perpetual  sword  play.  .  .  .  Concede  a  point  to  most  advo- 
cates and  they  think  you  weak.  There  is  no  strength  but  in 
desperate  one-sidedness.  By  and  by,  when  the  fever  of  com- 
petition is  tired  out,  there  will  be  clear,  calm  thinking,  and 
a  philosophy  will  emerge  worthy  of  the  New  Age  and  the 
New  World. 

TO   s.   L. 

February  22,  1880. 

The  telephone  wires  run  by  my  windows,  but  they  get 
no  further  toward  Germantown  than  my  neighbor  Stevens's 
mills.  I  fear  that  Edison  and  the  like  will  not  greatly 
serve  the  turn  of  Transcendental  preachers,  shelved  or  stir- 
ring. I  opine  that,  for  this  very  reason,  I  am  the  more  capa- 
ble of  recognizing  the  over-haste  of  science,  physical  and 
mechanical,  to  annihilate  those  sacred  spaces  and  periods  to 
which  the  personal  virtues  are  more  indebted  than  the 
times  believe,  for  disciplines  of  faith,  patience,  and  trust. 

Speaking  of  Transcendentalism  reminds  me  of  Chad- 
wick's  book  on  Religious  Problems.  I  found  it  abounding 
in  good,  brave,  and  beautiful  things ;  but  pervaded  by  a 
tone,  or  rather  tendency,  which  so  troubled  me  that  I 
wrote  him  in  full  about  it.  He  seems  to  me  to  be  drifting 
as  the  American  radicals  seem  to  me  to  be  doing  as  a  body  ; 
following  the  popular  current  instead  of  leading  it  on  to 
better  things.  For  this  contempt  of  reason  as  above  under- 
standing, of  substance  as  against  phenomena,  this  denial 
of  direct  or  intuitive  perception  of  realities  even  the  most 
9 


130  MEMOIR. 

universal,  is  certainly  the  high  road  to  materialism.  And 
Spencer,  apart  from  his  gift  at  generalizing  phenomena 
and  mechanically  arranging  them,  seems  to  me  a  mere 
word-monger  and  pompous  announcer  of  truisms  in  the 
name  of  solutions.  For  my  part,  a  commonplace  label  on  a 
heap  of  materials  is  none  the  more  satisfactory  to  me  for 
being  expanded  into  a  string  of  long  Latinized  terms  ;  and  I 
am  outraged  by  the  pretense  of  having  explained  what  one 
has  only  stated  over  again  in  a  swelling  tone.  Meantime, 
the  solid  ground  of  substance  is  cut  away  from  under  foot, 
and  the  infinite  free  spaces  shut  out  by  a  new  "  firmament," 
worse  than  the  Hebrew  one  in  Genesis !  And  we  who  in- 
sist that  there  is  no  "  supernatural "  in  the  nature  of  things, 
that  miracle  is  an  absurdity  on  its  face,  are  called  supernat- 
uralists  by  men  who  can  digest,  without  a  sign  of  wonder, 
such  irrational  or  preternatural  notions  as  those  of  a  world 
of  phenomena  without  substance,  of  things  seen  and  touched 
without  a  faculty  beyond  understanding  to  bridge  the  way 
from  ideal  to  real,  of  a  moral  philosophy  based  solely  on 
calculations  or  on  observed  causes  and  effects,  and  on  devel- 
oping the  whole  conception  of  duty  out  of  a  synthesis  of 
consequences  !  Would  it  be  surprising  if  minds  that  have 
been  led  by  "  science  "  into  taking  up  with  pride  such  as- 
tounding irrationalities  as  these,  should  make  their  next 
jump  into  the  pleasant  fields  of  an  external  Catholic  church  ? 
Well,  I  wrote  Chadwick  that  I  did  not  comprehend  his 
treatment  of  Transcendentalism ;  and  he  wrote  me  a  kind 
note  in  return,  promising,  some  day  of  leisure,  to  lay  out 
the  matter  more  clearly. 

I  get  on  with  my  Persia  as  well  as  I  could  expect,  hav- 
ing this  winter  been  wrestling  with  the  obscure  and  impal- 
pable relations  of  Manicheism  and  Gnosticism  with  the  early 
Christian  Church.  Now  I  am  on  the  pleasanter  track  of 
the  Shah-Nameh,  and  at  the  doors  of  Sufism,  etc.  Oh,  for 
the  mental  spring  and  freshness  of  days  gone  by  ! 

You  can  keep  up  these  by  your  constant,  refreshing  con- 


MEMOIR.  131 

tact  with  the  people,  and  the  thought  of  your  great  city- 
through  your  platform  on  the  Sundays.  It  is  friction  and 
stir  which  brings  thought,  as  well  as  power  of  expression. 
It  seems  to  me  the  latter  fails  first,  for  lack  of  the  accus- 
tomed stimulus  of  contact,  and  the  former  slowly  but  surely 
follows  it.  Moncure  Conway  has  written  to  me  to  send  or 
carry  something  in  shape  of  essay  to  the  conference  of 
Liberal  Thinkers  in  London  next  May.  I  have  written  so 
many  things  that  nobody  thinks  of  reading,  that  it  seems 
simply  an  absurdity  to  put  out  any  more.  And  to  go  to 
London  is  impossible. 

TO    R.    H.    MANNING. 

February  26,  1880. 
Just  one  word,  to  remove  a  misunderstanding  respecting 
some,  at  least,  of  Grant's  supporters.  I  for  one  do  not  favor 
him  because  I  think  the  South  needs  to  be  put  down  or  pun- 
ished, but  simply  as  the  best  protector  of  the  nation  against 
imminent  dangers  to  its  life.  Gen.  Grant  seems  to  me  to 
represent  that  precise  position,  between  "  over-severity  to 
the  South,"  and  what  I  call  a  panic-stricken  spirit  of  con- 
cession, .  .  .  which  is  indispensable  to  national  dignity  and 
firmness.  I  desire  no  other  "aggressiveness"  than  the  vigi- 
lance which  saves  liberty. 

TO    J.    HENRY    BUFFUM. 

1880. 
What  a  royal  time  you  must  be  having  !  Your  descrip- 
tion of  the  Alleghanies  almost  makes  my  eyes  water.  I 
weep  when  I  remember,  not  Zion,  but  the  "  everlasting 
hills,"  wherein  for  so  many  years  gone  by  my  soul  delight- 
ed. I  have  seen  something  of  the  Alleghanies,  having 
crossed  them  through  endless  woods  years  ago ;  but  I  never 
went  up  the  historic  valley  of  the  Shenandoah,  still  less  ex- 
plored the  mystic  land  beyond.  I  enjoyed  especially  your 
description  of  the  old  stately  Manor  house  at  Luray,  monu- 


132  MEMOIR. 

ment  of  what  human  and  physical  changes  !  .  .  .  For  me, 
I  celebrate  my  elms  and  the  low,  sweet  Andover  hills. 
"  Whene'er  I  take  my  walks  abroad,"  what  fresh  wonders 
greet  my  eyes  !  The  shades  grow  deeper  every  year,  and  I 
look  out  in  the  moonlight  through  the  wonderful  tracery  of 
these  stately  boughs  with  a  new  sense  of  the  true  perspec- 
tives of  life.  The  city  tides  roll  by  in  the  valley  beyond 
the  invisible  river  ;  and  I  have  but  to  mount  the  neighbor- 
ing hill  to  watch  the  sunset  on  mountain  sides  in  the  far 
horizon.  But  I  'm  not  a  Quietist ;  don't  imagine  it.  Never 
was  there  so  much  to  do,  so  little  time  to  do  it  in  ;  and  I 
grudge  every  moment  that  does  not  tell.  The  Oriental 
Elephant  is  close  at  hand  to  claim  every  spare  sliver  of 
time.  The  future  must  determine  whether  I  was  justified 
in  undertaking  so  absorbing  a  charge.  I  should  shudder 
when  I  think  of  its  probable  doom,  did  I  not  remember 
that  at  least  I  have  had  my  reward  in  the  pleasure  of  ex- 
ploring the  fields  into  which  it  has  called  me,  and  in  watch- 
ing the  flow  of  universal  laws  through  history.  I  certainly 
can  expect  no  other  reward  ;  and  on  the  whole  am  glad 
that  I  cannot. 

TO   s.   L. 

July  2,  1880. 

Alas  for  these  ecclesiastical  functions,  whose  demoraliz- 
ing influence  extends  not  only  to  the  clipping  down  of  high 
thought  to  the  miserable  span  of  half  an  hour,  but  to  dock- 
ing down  your  remittances  of  the  golden  coin  of  epistolary 
conversation  to  mere  semi-yearly  shreds !  But  even  the 
shred  is  homoousian,  and  to  a  spiritual  Pantheist  conveys 
the  whole  substance  from  which  it  flows.  Pause  here  ! 
Never  allow  yourself  to  be  forced  by  American  restlessness 
and  hate  of  continuous  mental  attention  into  a  spurious  com- 
pactness which  sacrifices  thoroughness  to  the  art  of  nudg- 
ing sleepy  pews.  Far  rather  cut  off  hymns,  scripture,  in- 
vocations. 

You  wish  I  might  have  been  with  you  a  little  to  wander 


MEMOIR.  133 

up  the  Wissahiccon,  and  recall  the  blessed  days  of  Shanklin 
and  Freshwater  Bay !  Ah  me !  the  bonds  the  Parcae  weave 
about  me  closer  and  closer  still,  they  will  not  loosen  till 
Atropos  gives  her  scissors  to  the  final  cut ! 

By    the   way,    speaking   of    European    memories,    who 

should   turn   up  at  Commencement   but  M O , 

the  blessed  youth  of  Italy.  .  .  .  You  slay  me  with  the 
words  Mount  Desert  I 

I  jump  from  pillar  to  post.  Let  me  tell  you  what  drives 
me  almost  distraught,  —  this  seeing  the  labors  of  one's  life 
at  leaving  an  honest  and  clear  record  and  standing  in  the 
world  for  what  one  is  and  believes,  crushed  in  a  moment 
in  some  irreparable  way.  The  other  day  a  letter  from  a 
Presbyterian  lady  asked  for  light  on  the  circumstances 
which  led  to  the  production  of  my  hymn,  commencing 
"  Saviour^  in  thy  mysterious  presence  kneeling."  I  have 
written  calmly  to  the  reverend  Dr.  who  compiles  the  Pres- 
byterian Hymn-book  for  putting  a  radical  of  thirty  years 
into  the  ranks  of  pronounced  Orthodoxy. 

TO    R.    H.    MANNING. 

July'll,  1880. 

It  seems  very  long  since  I  have  seen  you  all.  I  am 
tethered  like  my  own  unruly  cow  ;  yet  I  am  not  unruly, 
only  —  what  the  Latins  used  to  call  their  farm-servants  — 
"  bound  to  the  soil "  — adscriptus  glebce.  Come  and  see  my 
Homeric  oxen,  and  the  potato-field,  that  has  cost  so  much 
precious  time.  The  harvest  looks  promising ;  oats,  corn, 
and  hay  have  answered,  so  far,  to  our  desires.  But 
little  tirde  remains,  or  strength  either,  in  this  ingathering 
season,  for  far-off  L-an  and  its  heroic  poetry  and  the  raid 
of  fiery  Arabs  on  the  old  Eastern  world.  I  have  finished 
my  tale  of  Firdusi's  great  Epic  this  spring  and  summer,  and 
I  wish  it  might  tell  something  of  what  a  grand  national 
Epic  may  be  and  do. 

Probably  if  I  lived  in  New  York  I  should  feel  as  you  do 


134  MEMOIR. 

about  "  the  machine."  But  for  my  soul  I  cannot  see  any 
more  machinery  for  one  candidate  than  for  another.  It  is 
all  bad,  this  machine-work  in  everything  here  in  America. 

Not  the  least  so  in  "  Free  Religion."   Here  is  A ,  who 

has  been  trying  to  run  that  machine,  organizing  the  Eternal 
Truth  into  "  Liberal  Leagues  "  and  drumming  up  recruits. 

.  .  .  You  cannot  hold  the  light  in  your  fist.     And  A 

retires  disappointed  from  his  Index,  and  the  great  morning 
moves  upward  in  the  open  sky.  Alas,  the  "  Free  Religion- 
ists," like  the  politicians  and  the  manufacturers  and  the 
traders,  are  utilitarians ;  they  want  immediate  concrete 
effects,  labor-saving,  time-saving,  conversions  to  Truth  and 
Good,  neither  of  which  can  come  otherwise  than  by  personal 
insight  and  discipline.  This  wretched  business,  this  squab- 
ble over  the  vices  of  officials  and  representatives  of  the 
National  League  —  what  possible  connexion  has  it  all  with 
the  progress  of  universal  Religion  and  the  culture  of  man- 
kind in  ideas  and  beliefs  ?     I  think  A will  be  more 

in  his  true  place  in  writing  freely  and  directly  to  thinking 
men  than  in  trying  to  organize  the  unorganizable. 

I  agree  with  you  about  the  plans  of  the  Democrats.  And 
the  thing  looks  very  serious.  What  they  desire  to  do,  they 
have  full  opportunity  and  tremendous  temptation  to  do. 
Nothing  but  a  mighty  public  expression  against  them  will 
deter  them  from  doing  what  they  tried  unsuccessfully  in 
Maine,  and  are  trying  with  full  success  and  Northern  Re- 
publican encouragement,  in  every  Southern  State,  all  the 
time. 

Thank  you  for  the  excellent  obituary  of  George  Ripley, 
who  deserves  to  be  called  the  master  in  criticism.  What  a 
long,  noble,  faithful, and  comprehensive  work  he  has  done! 
Who  is  to  tell  the  story  ?  Some  one  who  has  known  him 
well,  I  hope,  and  who  will  do  him  justice.  He  was  as 
tender  and  true  a  gentleman  as  he  was  a  just  and  all-seeing 
censor  of  the  literature  of  the  day. 

You  rejoice  that  Grant  was  defeated.     I  should  put  it 


MEMOIR.  135 

perhaps  to  the  same  effect,  but  a  little  differently.  I  mourn 
that  the  outrageous  proceedings  of  the  men  who  set  them- 
selves up  for  his  henchmen  were  not  rebuked  by  the  grand 
old  soldier.  But  I  should  have  been  very  unwilling  that 
he  should  receive  the  nomination  through  such  manoeu- 
vers  as  Conkling,  Cameron,  and  Logan  undertook  to  put 
through. 

October  17,  1880. 

I  have  been  sick  all  summer,  with  persistent  splanchnic 
woes  ;  and  finally  had  to  go  to  the  White  Mountains  for  a 
change.  And  such  a  change  !  Such  glory  in  the  autumn 
forests,  such  grand  snow  and  frost  transfigurations  of  the 
rock-faces  and  the  eternal  pines  !  From  Kearsarge  on  the 
South,  from  Lisbon  Heights  on  the  North-west,  I  saw  the 
ranges  as  I  had  never  seen  them  before  ;  in  their  true  re- 
lations, from  without  instead  of  within ;  and  at  a  distance 
which  gave  full  dues  to  every  shoulder  and  peak  and  out- 
line and  lifted  mass.  Of  course  I  left  all  bodily  miseries 
behind  me,  and  returned  a  wiser  and  a  sounder  man  after  a 
week's  enjoyment  of  the  true  season  for  mountain  travel. 

It  was  not  till  the  other  day  that  I  learned  that  your 
good  sister,  that  true  saint  of  the  living  gospel,  had  passed 
away  from  your  sight.  .  .  .  You  will  miss  her  —  how  con- 
stantly and  deeply  —  in  your  home,  so  long  blessed  with 
her  sympathy  and  encouragement  in  all  high  aims  and 
pleasures.  But  you  are  too  thoughtful  and  too  experienced 
in  the  art  of  arts  —  that  of  reconciliation  with  the  laws  of 
life  and  the  paths  of  nature,  as  the  best  laws  and  paths  for 
us  all,  —  not  to  find  the  consolations  that  the  years  bring 
with  them  to  those  who  have  asked  only  to  know  the  truth 
of  our  being  and  to  conform  thereto.  Give  my  sincere 
sympathy  to  all  your  family. 

March  20,  1881. 
I  have  been  all  the  winter  at  work  on  the  universal  rela- 
tions of  the  great  Mahommedan  faith,  its  defects  and  their 


136  MEMOIR. 

parallels  with  those  of  Christianity.  I  assure  you,  a 
great  subject,  whether  or  not  I  can  get  a  hearing  for  it, 
and  any  recognition  of  my  own  eye  to  the  future,  as  well 
as  the  present,  of  belief  and  science. 

Glad  to  hear  from  J.  W.  C.  I  read  his  sermon  on  the 
Christian  name  in  the  last  number  of  the  Index  ;  and  I 
wish  I  could  say  it  was  more  satisfactory  to  me  than  it  is. 
It  seems  to  me  that  his  reasons  for  adhering  to  the  name 
were  very  inadequate,  and  would  make  any  proper  change 
in  name  from  one  positive  faith  to  another  impossible.  He 
first  says  truly  that  we  know  little  or  nothing  about  Jesus, 
and  then  he  bases  Christianity  and  its  fitness  to  survive  on  its 
relations  to  his  personal  character.  He  makes  science  (free 
and  impersonal)  as  truly  an  evolution  from  this  hypothetical 
conception  of  Christianity  as  are  the  doctrines  of  Roman 
Catholicism,  with  its  logical  central  Christ,  and  the  church 
that  follows  from  his  New  Testament  claims  !  For  my 
part,  every  day  I  live,  the  name  Christian  seems  less  and 
less  to  express  my  thought  and  tendency.  I  suspect  it  will 
be  so  with  the  Freethinking  world  generally.  As  for  mak- 
ing out  Unitarian^  at  this  stage,  to  mean  larger  liberty 
than  Christian^  as  some  are  doing,  —  that  seems  to  me  an- 
other attempt  at  stretching  Og's  bedstead,  so  that  the  good 
radical  fellows  may  all  lie  down  in  it. 

Czar  Alexander's  death  is  a  truly  Greek  Nemesis.  Rus- 
sian history  is  bound  to  be  a  tragedy  ;  not  a  new  one,  for 
thousands  of  exiles  are  groaning  in  Siberia,  and  as  many 
heads  have  been  struck  off  to  save  imperialism.  Now  the 
red  stream  takes  a  new  track,  that  is  all  the  difference. 
And  probably  this  is  not  the  end.  Nevertheless,  I  do  not 
want  these  Nihilists,  nor  the  International  Labor  League, 
hereabouts.  Like  ill-trained  dogs,  they  don't  know  friend 
from  foe,  nor  wisdom  from  folly,  nor  faith  and  honor  from 
conceit  and  rage. 

My  articles  in  the  Index  fail  to  keep  P to  the  points 

in  hand.     It  is  of  very  little  use  to  try  to  set  anybody  right 


MEMOIR.  137 

nowadays.     But  there  is  something  in  saying  your   say 
and  leaving  it. 

TO   s.   L. 

June  5,  1881. 

Your  notice  of  Carlyle's  Reminiscences  just  expresses  my 
own  feeling.  They  showed  how  capable  he  was  of  ideal- 
izing those  near  to  him  in  the  tenderest  and  most  childlike 
way.  Much  of  what  has  scandalized  the  world  is  due  to 
dyspepsia ;  but  much  to  the  amazing  keenness  and  truth 
of  the  criticisms  themselves.  Think  of  that  inimitable  de- 
scription of  Wordsworth  ;  and  Southey  could  not  complain. 
Coleridge  and  Lamb  both  really  had  their  deplorable  sides. 
I  read  the  whole  book  with  intense  interest,  of  course  some- 
times with  pain ;  but  it  did  not  hurt  my  admiration  or  grat- 
itude. I  think  in  many  ways  it  enhanced  them.  Have  you 
read  Wylie's  charming  book  [on  Carlyle]  ?  Read  it  if  you 
have  not.  I  am  on  thorns  of  impatience  for  Fronde's  vol- 
umes of  the  letters. 

The  Revised  New  Testament  has  a  great  many  remark- 
able improvements  on  the  old  text.  Other  changes  are 
questionable.  Some,  at  least,  shear  Jesus  of  his  nobility. 
Note  what  a  change  is  made  in  Matt.  xix.  16,  17.  Others 
strike  at  dogmas.  Hell  loses  some  of  its  terrors.  The 
translators  have  been  honest  and  brave.  A  host  of  verbal 
changes  add  greatly  to  the  clearness  of  the  text.  And  of 
course  the  effect  on  the  doctrine  of  literal  infallibility  is 
decisive. 

I  am  greatly  struck  by  the  contradictions  that  are  grow- 
ing up  in  the  Evangelical  mind  under  the  influence  of  the 
progress  of  learning  and  science.  Reading  Stanley's  Chris- 
tian Institutions  and  Robertson  Smith's  Lectures  on  the  Old 
Testament,  I  find  their  intense  Christian  prejudice  jars  in 
upon  the  fine  poetic  insight  of  the  one  and  the  astonishing 
critical  keenness  and  breadth  of  the  other,  in  a  manner 
that  must  soon  make  itself  felt  in  inward  conflicts  of  a  very 


138  MEMOIR. 

sharp  and  convulsive  kind,  for  them  and  for  others  at  a 
similar  stage,  on  the  border  land. 

I  hope  you  have  read  my  letters  to  Potter  in  the  Index. 
I  am  wearied  with  the  folly  of  the  present  drift  of  the  "  Free 
Religionists."  What  do  they  mean  to  do  with  the  foun- 
dations that  all  freedom  must  stand  upon,  —  personality, 
progress,  transcendental  perception,  and  law  ?  These  are 
all  forgotten  in  petty  "  crystallizations,"  or  else  mentioned 
only  to  be  abused. 

As  for  health,  I  hope  for  better  things,  But  last  win- 
ter's troubles  have  so  taken  hold  of  my  lower  limbs  that  I 
cannot  use  them  for  any  length  of  time.  I  think  I  am 
gaining.  I  am  certainly  taking  my  best  care  to  that  end. 
How  lovely  the  world  is  up  here  under  the  great  elms  and 
the  green  hills  I  need  not  say  ;  it  only  waits  for  you. 

TO    R.    H.    MANNING. 

January  8,  1882. 

This  last  year  has  been  rather  a  hard  one.  After  a 
whole  spring  and  summer  of  sickness,  the  journey  into  the 
mountains  and  then  to  Brooklyn  did  me  real  good,  which 
was  so  helped  on  by  a  fortunate  medicine  afterwards  that  I 
have  gained  exceedingly,  till  about  a  month  since,  when 
suddenly  there  caught  me  a  rheumatism  or  neuralgia  in  the 
chest  from  which  I  am  still  suffering. 

I  am  busy  at  the  old  work ;  a  great  deal  that  must  be 
read  and  thought  over  and  made  the  most  of,  for  what  I  am 
weak  enough  to  think  are  philosophical  uses.  "  I  hope  to 
be  spared  till,"  etc.,  as  the  tiresome  old  commentators  of 
the  Bible  were  wont  to  say.  But  I  won't  admit  that  my 
writing  is  commentating.  If  it  can  only  be  true  and  large 
interpretation  of  human  history,  that  is  all  I  ask. 

O.  B.  F.'s  recent  words  and  ways  I  don't  wholly  under- 
stand ;  though  I  can  see  the  situation  pretty  well.  I  sup- 
pose I  should  only  mystify  you  if  I  told  you  that  the  whole 
proceeding  only  proves  to  me  how  impossible  it  is  for  a 


MEMOIR.  139 

thoughtful  man  to  live  off  and  outside  of  a  transcendental 
basis  ;  as  I  think  he  has  been  really  trying  to  do.  You 
know  I  find  no  inconsistency  between  evolution  and  the 
original  fundamental  necessities  of  all  thought,  on  which  the 
transcendental  philosophy  is  founded.  Some  time  or  other 
I  shall  show  yoii  how  fully  you  yourself  agree  with  me, 
and  I  with  you. 

To  change  the  topic.  I  am  just  full  of  that  delicious 
operetta  of  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  —  Patience.  I  hope  you 
have  heard  it  at  least  twice.  The  satire  is  the  keenest,  the 
harmony  of  the  whole,  lilting  music,  phrase  and  dancing,  is 
perfect,  and  the  humor  so  irresistible  that  it  runs  in  my 
head  day  and  night.  And  right  in  the  midst  of  all  the 
broad  fun  is  that  exquisite  little  song  about  the  "  old,  old 
love,"  which  is  perfect  in  tenderness  and  strength.  It  is 
singular  that  such  fine  and  rushing  comedy  should  come  to 
us  from  England,  where,  we  are  wont  to  think,  wits  are 
slow  and  conventional.  It  recalls  what  I  used  to  believe  in 
theory,  that  the  best  humor  requires  the  contrasts  of  an  old 
and  complex  civilization.  Yet  how  we  haste,  here  in  Amer- 
ica, to  anything  humorous,  to  take  off  the  grinding  edge  of 
our  business  and  political  life.  Nobody,  but  a  few  literati, 
knows  anything  about  the  Swinburne,  Rossetti,  and  Wilde 
school  of  aesthetics  ;  yet  what  a  run  this  satire  has  ! 

What  a  pleasant  little  visit  I  had  at  your  house  !  Old 
friends  grow  more  and  more  precious  every  year. 


The  last  time  that  I  saw  my  friend  was  in  the 
summer  of  1881,  when  I  spent  a  delightful  Sunday 
with  him.  The  day  was  perfect.  The  preacher, 
tired  with  the  year's  work  and  distrustful  of  his  ser- 
mon, had  begged  that  we  should  not  come  to  church, 
and  my  time  was  short.     We  spent  the  day  in  the 


140  MEMOIR. 

study  and  among  the  lanes  and  hills  —  talking  of 
many  things.  He  read  to  me  some  chapters  of  his 
unfinished  Persia^  the  third  and  last  volume  of  his 
Oriental  Religions.  He  was  in  excellent  spirits,  and 
seemed  in  rather  unusual  health.  On  Monday  morn- 
ing he  drove  me  to  the  station ;  we  parted  there  — 
and  I  never  looked  upon  his  face  again. 

He  died  on  Sunday  evening,  the  nineteenth  of 
February,  1882,  after  a  week's  illness,  the  culmina- 
tion of  the  disease  that  had  long  been  upon  him. 
The  funeral  services  were  held  at  the  Unitarian 
Church  in  the  village,  which  he  had  been  wont  to  at- 
tend, rejoicing  to  find  there  an  independent  ministry 
of  breadth  kindred  to  his  own.  Sentences  were  read 
from  the  Scriptures  of  various  nations,  followed  by 
prayer,  the  singing  of  his  own  hymn  ''  I  bless  thee, 
Lord,  for  sorrows  sent,"  and  addresses  from  several 
friends.  All  gave  heartfelt  testimony  to  the  noble 
qualities  of  him  whom  they  honored.  They  bore 
witness  to  his  simple  manliness,  his  stainlessness  of 
heart  and  life,  his  brave  and  willing  sacrifices  of 
place  and  popularity  in  the  path  of  duty  ;  to  the  in- 
dependence in  which  he  was  content  to  walk  alone, 
obedient  to  the  inward  law,  and  faithful  to  his  own 
convictions  of  truth;  to  his  consecration  of  spirit,  his 
moral  inspiration,  his  unfaltering  championship  of 
right  against  every  injustice  and  every  form  of  bond- 
age, his  strong  spiritual  faith  and  genuine  religious- 
ness, his  patient  cheerfulness  under  that  "  shadow  of 
the  cross  which  early  fell  upon  his  life,"  his  devotion 
of  all  his  treasures  of  thought  and  scliolarship  to  the 
service  of  mankind  and  the  furtherance  of  all  no- 
blest aims  ;  to  the  unshaken  constancy  with  which 
he  "  obeyed  the  voice  at  eve,  obeyed  at  prime." 


MEMOIR.  141 

A  few  hours  later,  as  the  winter  day  was  closing, 
in  the  city  of  his  birth,  the  mortal  part  of  him  was 
laid  away.  "  Above,  tall  fir-trees  stretch  their  pro- 
tecting arms,  and  as  the  glowing  twilight  fades  into 
the  mystic  beauty  of  the  cloudless  night,  the  first 
crescent  moon  of  spring-time  and  the  friendly  stars 
look  calmly  down  upon  his  new-made  grave." 

But  with  us  who  knew  him,  and  with  the  world, 
remain  his  work  and  his  character.  With  us  abides, 
as  a  memory  and  an  inspiration,  the  genuine  nobility 
of  soul.  With  us  remains,  a  sacred  and  secure  posses- 
sion, the  profound  and  elevated  thought ;  the  absolute 
faith  in  God ;  the  clear,  spiritual  sight  of  things  di- 
vine, ideal,  invisible,  as  the  realities ;  the  keen  moral 
judgment  of  men  and  events,  untinged  with  bitter- 
ness ;  the  reverent  sensibility  to  all  truly  sacred 
things,  equaled  only  by  the  prompt  rejection  of  all 
that  only  pretended  to  be  sacred ;  the  absolute  sin- 
cerity and  sturdy  independence  in  thought,  speech, 
and  methods  of  action,  which,  while  respecting  the 
freedom  of  others,  may  not  always  have  been  able  to 
do  justice  to  methods  different  from  his  own ;  the 
devotion  to  liberty  in  all  its  forms ;  the  unwearied 
search  for  truth,  and  the  steady-working  industry 
under  the  burden  of  bodily  infirmity ;  the  sensitive 
love  of  beauty  in  nature  and  in  art ;  the  kindly  sym- 
pathies and  warm  attachments ;  the  too  modest  esti- 
mate of  himself  and  the  cordial  recognition  of  the 
good  work  and  worth  of  others  ;  the  bright  mirth  that 
lightened  out  of  his  habitual  seriousness,  —  all  these 
things  abide  with  us,  now  that  the  voice  is  stilled  and 
the  hand  lifeless.  Those  who  have  had  the  privilege 
of  his  friendship  must  be  ever  grateful  for  what  it 
has  been,  and  is,  to  them. 


142  MEMOIR. 

"  The  year  is  saddened,  especially  to  those  of  us 
who  are  in  '  life's  later  afternoon.'  But  faith  is 
strengthened ;  for  it  is  not  easy  to  believe  that  the 
spiritual  forces  we  have  known  and  felt  so  long  are 
conserved  only  by  being  translated  into  other  forms." 


LECTURES,  ESSAYS,  AND  SERMONS. 


FLORENCE. 


To  Americans,  at  least,  Florence  should  be  for- 
ever the  dearest,  as  it  certainly  is  the  fairest,  of  Ital- 
ian cities.  Its  history  affiliates  genius  with  liberty, 
and  identifies  ideal  life  with  popular  institutions. 
Grimm,  the  biographer  of  Michael  Angelo,  opens  his 
work  with  this  fine  tribute  to  its  democracy  :  ^'  In 
Athens  and  Florence  we  may  say  that  no  stone  was 
laid  upon  another,  no  picture,  no  poem  came  forth, 
but  the  entire  population  was  its  sponsor.  Whether 
Santa  Maria  del  Fiore  was  rebuilt,  whether  San 
Giovanni  gained  a  couple  of  golden  gates,  whether 
Pisa  was  besieged,  peace  concluded,  or  a  mad  carni- 
val procession  celebrated, — every  one  was  concerned 
in  it,  the  same  general  interest  was  evinced  by  all. 
.  .  .  Athens  and  her  destiny  is  a  s^^mbol  of  the 
whole  life  of  Greece.  Florence  is  a  symbol  of  the 
prime  of  Roman  Italy.  Both,  so  long  as  their  liberty 
lasted,  are  a  reflection  of  the  golden  age  of  their 
land  and  people.  After  liberty  was  lost  they  are  an 
image  of  the  decline  of  both  until  their  final  ruin." 

"  Every  Florentine  work  of  art  carries  the  whole 
of  Florence  within  it.  Dante's  poems  are  the  result 
of  the  wars,  the  negotiations,  the  religion,  the  philos- 
ophy, the  gossip,  the  faults,  the  vice,  the  hatred,  the 
love,  and  the  revenge  of  the  Florentines." 

10 


146  FLORENCE. 

All  this  is  true,  and  more  than  this.  What  Homer 
and  Shakespeare  are  among  poets,  what  Plato  is 
among  philosophers,  that  was  Florence  among  cities, 
in  her  best  days.  A  pope,  speaking  in  wonder  of 
her  great  ambassadors,  called  her  the  "fifth  element 
of  the  world." 

"  Whatsoever  may  be  done,  I  can  do  as  well  as  any 
other,"  wrote  one  whose  name  stands  for  universal 
genius,  beautiful  in  body  and  soul,  not  only  master  of 
all  the  fine  arts,  but  pioneer  of  modern  science,  and 
best  physical  philosopher  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
—  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  "  Better  than  any  other,"  he 
might  have  said,  for  he  is  true  representative  of  his 
Florence,  where,  whatsoever  the  age  could  do  was 
done,  and  done  in  ways  matchless  then,  and  to  be 
revered  still. 

First  of  Italian  cities  to  assert  independence  of  the 
German  Emperor,  last  of  mediseval  republics  to  sur- 
render municipal  freedom  ;  first  again  to  yield  local 
autonomy  for  the  inauguration  of  Italian  unity  ;  least 
capable  of  enduring  tyrants,  yet  least  sanguinary  in 
revolution ;  transforming  goldsmiths  and  ivory  car- 
vers into  monarchs  of  art,  defending  her  fortresses 
b}^  the  military  genius  of  her  greatest  sculptor  ;  on 
her  right,  the  tower  where  modern  astronomy  began 
in  Galileo's  night  watches ;  on  her  left,  the  convent 
where  Fra  Angelico  transfigured  painting  with  the 
purest  touch  art  ever  knew;  proud  to  claim  the 
ashes  of  her  once  exiled  Dante,  and  crown  with  lau- 
rels that  wonderful  imagination  which  could  turn  the 
terrible  creed  of  the  Middle  Ages  into  an  immortal 
flower  and  tread  alone  the  spheres  of  judgment,  met- 
ing to  every  pontiff,  king,  and  lord  his  place  by  the 
awful  sentence  of  moral  law ;  her  people  always  the 


FLORENCE.  14T 

most  gentle  in  manners,  pure  of  speech,  and  ripe  in 
culture  among  Italians,  —  Florence  is  ideal  in  what- 
ever aspect  regarded,  and  at  this  day  contains  the 
choicest  of  those  treasures  which  Italy  offers  to  the 
culture  of  the  world.  Though  with  less  breadth  of 
historical  significance  than  Rome,  yet  her  appeal  to 
the  imagination  is  more  direct,  and  her  relations  with 
the  future  are  probably  of  a  higher  quality. 

Shall  I  venture  to  attempt  a  portrait  with  its  nat- 
ural setting,  taken  in  the  early  spring  ? 

From  distant,  circling,  purple  and  amber  hills, 
through  the  heart  of  a  stately  city,  descends  a  noble 
river  spanned  by  bridge  beyond  bridge,  whose  gener- 
ous arches,  each  closing  with  its  own  reversed  image 
in  the  mirror  beneath  into  a  fair  oval,  lead  the  eye 
down  through  glowing  vistas  into  the  open  sunsets 
they  reflect.  A  wide  Campagna  of  furrowed  mead- 
ows and  ferny  brooks  tempts  you  out  and  away 
where  peasants  are  lopping  their  straggling  olives 
into  graceful  urns  to  hold  the  tendrils  of  their  vines 
and  keep  safe  the  purple  clusters  ;  and  straw-plaiters 
sit  at  their  thresholds,  with  bright-eyed  children 
browning  in  sunshine  about  their  knees,  and  ruddy 
country  girls,  sheltering  themselves  from  heat  under 
the  quaint  head-gear  of  their  market  burdens,  are 
treading  the  highways  with  agile  steps.  Here  shin- 
ing hollows  brim  over  with  rustic  songs,  and  there 
the  very  beggar  under  the  Virgin's  shrine  in  the  wall, 
with  his  musical  invocations  and  appeals  and  his  artis- 
tic grace,  stirs  your  imagination  quite  as  much  as  your 
pity.  You  saunter  among  laurestine  and  hawthorn 
hedges  and  white  stuccoed  walls-where  the  wild  rasp- 
berry, rose,  and  ivy  weave  delicate  shadows  across 
the  crevices,  and  clinging  grasses  thrust  out  gossamer- 


148  FLORENCE. 

like  threads  like  gold,  and  startled  lizards  flash  like 
sunbeams  in  and  out.  And  so  you  slowly  near  those 
undulating  lines  of  encompassing  hills,  wondering  at 
their  tender  transformations  and  noble  masses  of 
color.  Your  eye  follows  long  stretches  of  solitary 
road  leading  up  their  slopes  to  old  towered  home- 
steads among  cypresses  or  shadowy  olives,  or  more 
often  standing  out  naked  and  clear,  strong  built,  and 
guarded  by  stone  lion  or  leopard  roughly  carved.  It 
lingers  on  the  huddled  heaps  of  long  gray  wall  and 
red  and  yellow  tiles  and  heavy  brown  eaves  of  some 
ancient  hamlet,  with  old  church-tower  and  pierced 
belfry  rising  above  them.  It  notes  how  Nature  coun- 
teracts the  effects  of  a  certain  dislike  for  shade  trees 
in  these  Italian  children  of  the  sun  which  has  stripped 
the  Apennines  of  their  ancient  raiment,  doing  her 
best  to  give  picturesque  coloring  to  the  bare  lime- 
stones with  her  iron  and  rain,  as  well  as  by  sprink- 
ling every  bank  with  hyacinths  and  daisies  as  soon  as 
it  is  green,  and  with  great  rose  and  purple  anemones 
even  in  February  and  March.  And  then  it  is  led 
away  to  the  stately  stone  pines,  so  common  in  Tur- 
ner's pictures,  dark  domes  of  foliage  lifted  high  on 
tall  bare  stems  and  standing  alone,  prophet- like, 
on  jutting  hill-tops,  grandly  real  against  the  melting 
lines  of  earth  and  sky,  steeped  in  the  glow  of  latest 
sunset  or  earliest  morning.  At  last,  from  some  high 
knoll  and  in  some  happy  moment,  it  is  blessed  with 
full  vision  of  that  wonderful  Tuscan  atmosphere, 
blending  the  blue  of  mountain  distance  with  the  rus- 
set of  bare  limestone  and  the  suffusing  gold  of  sun- 
light, into  a  color  for  which  there  is  no  name,  turning 
February  into  June,  and  brooding  like  a  benediction 
over  a  bright  illimitable  plain,  that  stretches  away 


FLORENCE.  149 

fertile  and  populous  to  the  misty  heights.  The  city- 
domes  and  towers  flash  back  the  sunshine  from  the 
heart  of  this  loveHness  where  they  have  dwelt  for 
centuries  at  home ;  and  in  winter  the  alabaster 
snows  of  the  Apennines,  far  in  the  horizon,  seem  an 
outer  garland  of  lilies,  or  the  white  rose  petals  of 
Dante's  dream  of  Paradise.  Is  not  that  a  setting  for 
the  vicissitudes  and  tragedies  of  a  thousand  historic 
years  ? 

We  cannot  wonder  that  emotional  aspiration  is  the 
main  feature  of  Florentine  art,  as  large  dramatic  in- 
terest is  of  the  old  Venetian,  and  genuine  sympathy 
with  nature  and  social  progress,  of  the  art  of  our  own 
time.  A  tender  yearning  will  be  found  to  pervade 
it  all,  weighing  down  the  eyelids,  dilating  the  lips, 
and  shaping  forth  the  delicately  mobile  lines  of  that 
half  sweet,  half  sad  type  of  countenance  which  con- 
stantly reappears  in  all  Tuscan  painting  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  and  still  looks  up  into  your  face  in 
every  sunny  by-way  of  the  Tuscan  hill  country,  so 
that  the  Florentine  peasant  boys  and  girls  will  always 
hover  in  your  memory  like  the  images  of  a  happy 
dream. 

Here  was  the  fit  surrounding  of  the  monk  Angelico 
da  Fiesole,  the  most  spiritual  of  Catholic  artists,  who 
made  poetry  of  theology,  who  painted  kneeling,  with 
prayer  and  yow,  for  the  love  of  God  and  man,  as 
that  age  understood  them,  and  failed  only  when  he 
tried  to  paint  sin.  His  most  famous  picture  is  one  in 
which  serried  hosts,  in  robes  of  a  splendor  that  is 
simply  the  outflaming  of  praise,  are  breathing  their 
souls  through  lines  of  lifted  trumpets,  hastening 
with  feet  of  gladness  and  faces  of  glory  towards  a 
central  light,  all  drawn  by  the  omnipotence  of  sym- 


150  FLORENCE. 

pathy  into  hushed  and  ordered  lines.  It  must  have 
suggested  Milton's  description  ''  At  a  Solemn  Mu- 
sick  *';  — 

"  Where  the  bright  seraphim,  in  burning  row, 
Their  loud  uplifted  angel  trumpets  blow ; 
And  the  cherubick  host,  in  thousand  quires, 
Touch  their  immortal  harps  of  golden  wires." 

But  what  suggested  the  picture  ?  As  I  have 
watched  the  wonderful  atmosphere  of  these  Tuscan 
hills,  their  long  lines  upheaved  on  a  vast  sea  of  opal, 
wave  beyond  wave  of  vital  hues  stretching  away  till 
they  passed  into  the  mysten.^  where  no  eye  could 
follow  and  no  horizon  was,  and  as  I  heard  the  chant- 
ing chimes  from  a  hundred  unseen  valleys  and  silent 
nooks,  melting  as  they  rose  into  one  musical  tone, 
while  the  brimming,  deepening  blue  received  them 
all  into  its  rest,  I  could  easily  conceive  how  the  art- 
ist's imagination,  though  trained  to  read  his  super- 
natural mythology  into  natural  forms  and  colors, 
misjht  well  behold  those  reallv  human  hosts  of  his 
picture  ascending  and  descending  within  this  liv- 
ing glory,  and  treading  these  mountains  of  palpitat- 
ing light,  fit  vestures  of  their  ecstasies  of  hope  and 
faith. 

Here,  too,  in  these  veils  of  mountain  purple  belong 
Dante's  Circles  of  Paradise,  as  I  have  already  said. 
No  wonder  the  exiled  poet  bore  even  to  his  grave  the 
unutterable  longing  to  return  hither,  sternly  as  he  had 
been  paying  back,  in  his  terrible  Inferno,  the  party 
rancor  which  had  made  him  homeless  on  the  earth. 
One  can  fully  appreciate  the  self-sacrifice  which  di- 
rected his  manly  letter  to  friends  who  had  procured 
a  remission  of  the  decree  of  banishment,  on  condition 
that  he  should  confess  his  fault  and  pay  a  slight  fine. 


FLORENCE.  161 

"  Is  it  generous  thus  to  recall  me  after  an  exile  of 
fifteen  years  ?  ...  If  you  have  found  a^  way  by 
which  I  can  return  and  keep  my  honor,  how  gladly 
would  I  seize  it !  But  if  there  be  no  other  than  this 
you  offer  me,  to  Florence  I  shall  never  return.  What 
then?  Can  I  not  everywhere  behold  the  sun  and 
stars,  and  devote  myself  to  the  disciplines  of  truth? 
Do  I  need  thus  to  degrade  my  manhood  ?  No,  truly, 
I  go  not  so  to  Florence,  even  for  my  bread !  " 

Scarcely  less  pathetic  is  Galileo's  tower,  on  a  hill- 
top a  mile  from  the  city  walls.  One  ascends  a  nar- 
row flight  of  stone  steps,  the  lowest  a  broken  capital, 
into  a  small  bare  room,  the  windows  of  which  are 
now  bricked  in,  and  thence  to  the  tiled  roof  of  the 
tower,  surrounded  by  a  low  crenelated  wall.  An  im- 
mense black  weather-cock  perks  its  head  into  the 
air  from  a  corner,  as  if  to  mock  like  the  old  Church 
«,t  astronomy.  Beneath,  Val  d'Arno  stretches  away 
towards  the  soft  low  hills  and  western  sea.  This  was 
the  reformer's  outlook.  And  what  a  reform  it  was, 
that  new  theory  of  the  relation  of  the  earth  to  the 
sun  !  Texts  confuted,  dogmas  nullified,  infallibili- 
ties defied,  traditions  of  two  thousand  years  puffed 
away  in  a  breath  ;  no  up  and  down  in  the  spaces  of 
the  universe  any  more  ;  the  old  heavens  and  hells  sent 
to  oblivion  ;  the  stable  earth  degraded  to  a  planet  and 
set  whirling ;  eternal  Rome,  centre  of  creation  no 
more  ;  only  scientific  truth  steadfast,  all  else  but  for  a 
day,  —  this  was  what  fell  from  the  star  courses  through 
that  artist's  "  optic  glass  "  into  the  soul.  What  sig- 
nified little  Italy  at  his  feet,  so  proud  of  her  immobil- 
ity, yet  spinning  through  space  the  while  ?  Conceive 
him  looking  down  upon  sleeping  Florence  with  clear 
recognition  of  the  unbelief,  the  wrath,  the  penalty  to 


152  FLORENCE. 

come  on  him  from  man,  then  upward  to  the  silence 
and  sovereignty  of  eternal  law  ! 

But  if  one  would  see  what  Art  can  do  to  embody 
the  spirit,  he  must  study  Michael  Angelo's  unfinished 
statues  scattered  about  Florence.  He  will  observe 
that  this  artist's  conception  seems  to  have  grown  as 
he  worked,  till  he  despaired  of  his  material.  Mi- 
chael Angelo  cut  straight  into  his  block  without 
sketch  or  model,  and  as  with  a  divine  frenzy,  so  that 
it  seemed  sometimes  as  if  the  marble  would  go  to 
pieces  under  his  hand,  the  thought  expanding  even 
more  rapidly  within  him  the  while.  Could  stone 
keep  pace  with  soul  ?  Every  mark  of  those  serrated 
chisels  is  a  quick  thought.  You  stand  upon  the 
verge  of  things  inexpressible  in  form.  You  see  just 
where  the  marble  failed  as  before  the  pressure  of  a 
god,  yet  retaining  intimations  of  the  majestic  idea 
it  could  not  hold,  hovering  about  it  as  in  spiritual 
presence,  perceivable  not  so  much  by  the  eye  as  by  the 
imagination.  In  the  chapel  of  the  Medici  family  all 
you  see  is  his  work.  These  marbles  are  monuments 
not  so  much  of  the  tyrannical  and  vicious  race  whose 
name  they  bear,  as  of  a  great  intellect  flooded  with 
heroic  feeling.  Two  of  these  groups  are  well  known 
in  this  country  by  casts  and  engravings.  In  each  a 
male  and  female  form  recline  on  a  tomb,  with  the 
sitting  figure  of  the  prince  who  is  commemorated 
above  them. 

They  were  the  last  word  of  Liberty  to  fallen  Flor- 
ence^ when  Art  alone  was  free  to  speak  it.  These 
shapes  are  cast  in  superhuman  mould.  One  has 
fallen  asleep  for  very  weariness  of  grief.  "  While 
power  unjust  and  guilt  prevail,  awake  me  not  I  " 
Opposite  her  sits  one,  like  Jeremiah  among  the  ruins 


FLORENCE.  153 

of  Jernsalem.  Above,  one,  the  face  withdrawn  into 
the  dark  shadow  of  his  hehnet,  the  head  resting  on  the 
hand,  which,  for  whomsoever  it  is  meant,  might  well 
pass  for  Art's  own  image  of  a  Destroyer  of  Liberty. 
Men  have  gazed  on  it  with  shuddering  awe,  as  if 
none  but  he  who  made  it  could  tell  the  terrible  secret 
hidden  in  that  shadow.  "  It  is  a  spectre,"  they  say  ; 
"and  what  stern  remorseful  gloom  !  What  eternity 
of  retribution  brooding  over  the  consequences  of 
crime !  "  Yes,  but  do  not  pause  there.  As  you  look 
deeper  and  draw  nearer,  a  new  meaning  is  disclosed. 
A  noble  grief  seems  passing  onward  into  repentance 
and  reconciliation,  as  of  one  who  at  last  beholds  the 
law  that  from  his  evil  educes  good.  It  was  not  in  the 
genius  of  art  to  despair  of  liberty.  The  other  monu- 
ment is  better  known.  Night,  with  her  head  drooped 
under  the  bent  arm  and  hand,  in  slumber  as  profound 
as  that  in  which  Freedom  has  sunk  in  many  an  evil 
day ;  and  Dawn,  rising  in  his  gradual  might  like  the 
slow  coming  of  a  great  thought,  like  a  nation's  resur- 
rection, like  all  awakening  of  power.  In  these  works 
Florence  answers  the  pretense  that  the  fine  arts  are 
anti-democratic,  that  popular  institutions  cannot  in- 
spire ideals  of  intellect  and  feeling. 

The  world  has  no  other  marbles  so  great  as  these 
monuments  of  the  love  of  liberty,  no  sculptor  who 
equals  this  republican  among  artists,  whose  lofty 
philosophy  made  him  regardless  of  rank  and  dignity 
in  others,  and  whom  popes  and  princes  scarce  ven- 
tured to  offend.  Pope  Julius  took  care  to  bid  him 
be  seated  as  soon  as  he  appeared,  knowing  well  that 
so  independent  a  person  would  not  hesitate  to  seat 
himself^  even  in  papal  presence,  if  unbidden.  Yet 
what  a  sense  of  insufficiency  to  his  own  ideal  weighed 


154  FLORENCE. 

down  his  spirit !  The  tomb  of  this  Julius  was  to 
have  been  the  most  stupendous  piece  of  sculpture  in 
the  world,  and  every  figure  was  to  embody  the  soul's 
victory  over  death.  But  the  plan  scarcely  got  be- 
yond the  one  great  figure  of  Moses  which  stood 
forty  years  unfinished  in  his  workshop,  while  the  ma- 
jestic whole  was  the  nightmare  of  his  hopeless  de- 
sire. "  My  youth,"  he  groaned,  "  has  been  lost,  bound 
hand  and  foot  in  this  tomb."  Even  genius  must  ac- 
cept limits,  —  "  transcendent  capacity  for  taking 
trouble,"  Carlyle  calls  it.  In  his  ideality  he  was 
truly  Florentine,  and  especially,  in  that  all  he  did  in 
sculpture  was  emotional  and  spiritual.  As  architect, 
it  was  otherwise.  His  building  was  infected  with 
the  cold,  stiff  symmetry  of  the  rising  Renaissance.  It 
was  the  personal  humanity  that  sculpture  deals  with, 
that  made  it  his  real  sphere.  His  to  carve  souls  in 
stone,  not  to  build  houses  to  set  them  up  in.  His  to 
melt  the  rock  and  make  it  flow  in  waves  of  tender- 
ness, sorrow,  and  awe.  Here  he  is  maturest  of  artists. 
Raphael  only  has  painted  the  inspiration  of  child- 
hood in  his  infant  Christs.  But  Raphael  never 
painted  motherhood  as  Michael  Angelo  could  carve 
it,  as  in  the  Medici  Chapel  group,  and  the  Pieta  of 
the  Duomo.  His  whole  life,  it  has  been  said,  was 
composed  of  four  adorations.  Art,  Vittoria  Colonna, 
Dante,  God.  The  last  was  its  "  path,  motive,  guide, 
original,  and  end."     Of  Vittoria  he  says  :  — 

"  Better  plea 
Love  cannot  have  than  that,  in  loving  thee, 
Glory  to  that  Eternal  Peace  is  paid, 
Who  such  divinity  to  thee  imparts 
As  hallows  and  makes  pure  all  gentle  hearts." 

And  he  whom  tyrants  could  not  force,  nor  riches 


FLORENCE.  155 

bribe  to  the  ignoble  use  of  genius,  whose  wrath  was 
terrible  where  he  detected  meanness  or  pretense,  had 
yet  learned  to  receive  his  inspiration  as  a  little 
diild :  — 

"  The  prayers  I  make  will  then  be  sweet  indeed, 
If  Thou  the  spirit  give  by  which  I  pray  : 
Unless  thou  show  to  us  thine  own  true  way 
No  man  can  find  it ;  Father,  thou  must  lead." 

A  certain  anthropomorphic  spirit,  natural  to  art- 
ists, at  least  in  those  days,  and  which  has  not  yet 
learned,  in  the  common  conceptions  of  worship,  to 
withdraw  before  the  profounder  thought  of  the  In- 
scrutable and  Inconceivable,  will  come  more  and 
more  to  be  held  the  defect  alilie  in  Michael  Angelo's 
religion  and  in  his  art.  God  was  to  him  a  man  whom 
he  could  paint  and  in  other  ways  subject  to  finite 
conditions.  And  as  Raphael  could  represent  Deity 
in  the  vision  of  Ezekiel,  as  a  benignant  Jupiter,  rid- 
ing on  beasts  and  upborne  by  children  flying  through 
the  air,  so  Michael  Angelo  actually,  and  with  even 
much  less  success  for  the  cultivated  imagination,  has 
depicted  the  Eternal  as  a  personage  drawing  forth 
the  primitive  man  from  nonentity!  And  this  ab- 
surdity has  actually  been  described  as  superior  to 
anything  else  in  the  realm  of  art,  in  its  suggestion  of 
the  idea  of  omnipotence  !  But  these  are  the  extrav- 
agances of  ideal  aspiration,  and  we  can  honor  this, 
even  where  we  must  recognize  the  limitations  of  art, 
in  obedience  to  a  deeper  reverence  before  the  laws 
of  nature  and  truth. 

In  the  streets  of  Florence  you  cannot  feel  as  in 
other  cities.  Art  here  wears  a  serious  countenance, 
and  is  justified  of  her  children,  like  justice,  heroism, 
or  love.     What  you  see  was  not  made  in  a  day  or 


156  FLORENCE. 

for  a  day.  Men  were  content  to  spend  their  lives  in 
doing  a  few  things,  or  even  a  part  of  one  thing 
only,  so  great  that  other  ages  must  be  left  to  end  it, 
and  a  common  task  and  triumph  bind  many  genera- 
tions as  one.  For  they  were  buoyed  up  on  a  popular 
appreciation  of  genius  and  labor,  which  insisted,  not 
on  much  doing  but  on  nohle  and  perfect  doing.  To 
see  that  the  whole  world  should  come  to  Florence  for 
its  best,  that  nothing  was  made  which  by  any  possi- 
bility another  age  should  have  to  unmake,  —  this  was 
the  strain  of  each  and  of  all.  Ghiberti  spent  fifty 
years  on  the  bronze  gates  of  the  Baptistery,  but  all 
the  years  of  human  history  have  not  produced  their 
equal  in  that  kind  of  work.  A  hundred  and  thirty 
years  was  the  Cathedral  of  Florence  in  building. 
Architect  after  architect  died  and  passed  on  the  torch 
of  beauty.  Even  yet  it  awaits  the  crowning  touch  of 
Italy's  regenerated  genius.  On  the  church  of  San 
Giovanni  the  city  wrote  the  words,  "  This  shall  stand 
till  the  Judgment  Day." 

Patronage  never  did  for  art  what  this  popular  en- 
thusiasm effected  in  the  development  of  genius  in 
Florence.  Explain  it  as  you  will,  it  is  one  of  the 
ethnological  mysteries,  like  Greek  taste  and  Hebrew 
passion.  The  credit  of  Tuscan  art  used  to  be  given, 
by  historians  like  Roscoe,  to  the  Medici  family.  It 
was  the  whole  people  who  bore  Cimabue's  picture  of 
the  Madonna  in  festal  procession  to  its  throne  in 
Santa  Maria  Novella.  A  colossal  marble  form  sits 
beside  the  Cathedral  Square,  looking  up  at  the  mag- 
nificent structure  in  its  centre ;  and  underneath  it  is 
written :  "  This  is  that  Arnolfo  who,  when  commis- 
sioned by  decree  of  the  people  to  build  for  Florence  a 
temple  which  no  industry  nor  skill  of  man  could  pos- 


FLOREJ^CE.  167 

sibly  surpass,  proved  equal  to  the  sublime  desire  of 
the  citizens."  Giotto  was  bidden  to  build  a  Campanile 
that  should  echpse  everything  in  Greek  or  Roman 
art.  And  it  is  doing  him  small  justice  to  say  that  he 
fulfilled  the  task.  Individual  guilds  of  artisans  built 
the  great  churches,  and  expended  more  money  on  a 
single  door  than  would  build  an  American  factory. 
Does  this  look  like  useless  work  ?  Let  us  remember 
that  labor,  and  not  rank,  had  sway  in  Florence.  The 
skilled  artisan  held  the  purse  of  the  state.  For 
years  no  noble  could  hold  office  unless  enrolled  in  a 
trade-guild.  Although,  of  course,  personal  rights  had 
by  no  means  so  wide  diffusion  as  with  us,  yet  in  no 
state  of  Italy  were  the  people  so  nearly  recognized  as 
the  fountain  of  political  power.  And  in  none  was 
prosperity  founded  and  maintained  in  so  large  a 
measure  on  the  basis  of  popular  industry  and  skill. 
It  was  not  the  patronage  of  kings  or  nobles,  but  the 
spontaneous  instinct  of  the  producer  of  wealth  for 
culture,  that  crowned  Florence  queen  of  art. 

The  Cathedral  represents  that  grave  simplicity 
and  sincerity  out  of  which  all  beauty  flowed  in  Flor- 
ence. You  will  be  disappointed  at  first  by  a  certain 
sombreness  in  that  swelling  mountain  of  black  and 
white  paneling.  But  how  heroic  the  scale !  And 
no  idle  ostentation,  no  frippery  of  a  day  is  here  ! 
This  is  built  for  all  time,  for  all  experience ;  place 
and  sect  have  no  claim  here.  It  is  a  voice  of  essential 
humanity,  "  not  unto  us  but  unto  Thee  be  praise." 

Now  let  us  draw  near,  and  we  see  that  it  is  steeped 
in  fine  tracery  of  rich  mosaic  and  richer  moulding, 
whose  low  relief  and  modest  color  are  absorbed  in 
the  majesty  of  the  whole.  It  is  the  inexhaustible 
garner  into  which  age  after  age  has  gathered  its  best. 


158  FLORENCE. 

Within,  scarce  one  ornament  of  carved  or  gilded 
work,  scarce  one  image,  painted  or  sculptured,  of 
aught  in  heaven  or  earth,  breaks  the  bare  sublimity 
of  those  stupendous  columns  which  probably  sustain 
a  wider  extent  of  arch  and  vaulting  of  vast  reaches 
of  sombre  wall,  almost  limitless  spaces  lost  above  in 
the  mystical  twilight  of  the  dome,  than  any  other 
equal  number  in  any  other  edifice  ever  built  by 
man. 

Gothic  architecture  usually  breaks  up  surfaces  and 
scatters  the  feeling  on  innumerable  aspirations. 
Here  thought  is  concentrated  on  an  absolute  Unity. 
It  says,  like  Egyptian  Isis,  "  I  am  that  which  was, 
and  is,  and  shall  be." 

Savonarola's  pulpit-thunder  reverberated  through 
these  spaces  ;  through  these  glooms  the  breathless 
populace  beheld  his  eyes  glowing  with  an  enthusiasm 
that  seemed  preternatural,  and  abolished  fear  and 
doubt  as  it  did  these  shadows  of  the  Temple.  Often 
scarce  able  to  reach  his  pulpit  from  his  cell,  the 
place  and  the  work  would  exalt  him  with  an  inspi- 
ration that  swept  all  Florence  on  its  tides  through 
the  gates  of  liberty  and  love ;  then,  sinking  back  at 
the  close,  he  could  do  no  more  for  days. 

This  symbolic  art  neither  Protestant  nor  Catholic 
theology  can  take  up  as  its  own.  The  life  it  flowed 
from  in  the  builders  was  broader  than  their  extreme 
belief.  It  is  only  when  music,  statuary,  and  painting 
shall  be  consecrated  to  the  highest  personal  and  so- 
cial experience  of  man  that  these  arts  will  dwell  in 
grand  architecture  like  this,  as  nerve  and  muscle  and 
blood  dwell  in  human  bodies,  —  as  so  many  special 
forces  of  its  all-embracing  life. 

Close   beside    this  symbolism   of  Eternal   Law  is 


FLORENCE.  159 

Giotto's  Campanile,  or  bell-tower,  a  pillar  of  light, 
an  upstreaming  of  world-life,  an  interweaving  of  all 
forms  of  delicate  grace  that  Gothic  art  ever  attained. 
Around  its  base  a  belt  of  inwrought  escutcheons 
celebrates  the  lives  of  saints  and  the  labors  of  ar- 
tisans. 

And,  fronting  both,  is  the  old  octagonal  Baptistery 
with  its  plain,  pyramidal  roof,  for  hundreds  of  years 
the  city  cathedral.  This  grave  and  modest  structure 
forms  the  setting  for  the  bronze  gates  of  Ghiberti, 
which  Michael  Angelo  thought  "  worthy  to  be  the 
gates  of  Paradise."  In  each  gate  the  several  groups, 
idealizing  scenes  from  Bible  story,  are  set  in  frames 
sprinkled  with  statuettes,  and  all  together  inclosed  in 
a  border  of  animals  and  plants.  There  is  something 
stupendous  in  the  wealth  of  dramatic  life  concen- 
trated in  these  charming  Oriental  groups,  as  well  as 
in  the  casting  of  so  many  figures  projecting  so  far, 
and  so  minutely  related  to  each  other.  But  the  mir- 
acle is  in  the  wreathed  borders.  It  is  not  the  accu- 
racy of  science  mereljs  not  the  grace  and  cunning  of 
those  flowing  lines  of  leaf  and  blossom,  grass  and  fruit, 
so  handsomely  disposed,  nor  the  skill  with  which  the 
living  creatures  are  interspersed  among  the  various 
natural  perches,  nests  and  coverts ;  it  is  the  genuine 
vitality  of  the  creature  and  the  plant,  caught  and  con- 
veyed into  the  bronze.  These  flowers  drink  dew  and 
breathe  air  ;  these  little  leaves  clap  their  hands  in  the 
sunshine  ;  these  birds  warble  and  hover  and  peck  and 
brood  ;  the  owl  looks  through  the  night  with  oracular 
eyes  ;  the  squirrel  half  chuckles  over  his  nut,  half 
trembles  at  the  rustle  of  the  spray  close  by ;  the  ser- 
pent aims  its  fang  at  the  startled  bird  above  him,  the 
tardy  snail  bends  the  rose  petal  under  his  cautious 


160  FLORENCE. 

foot ;  insects  flit  in  and  out  of  the  foliage,  and  life 
breathes  and  beats  and  flushes  through  the  whole. 
Ghiberti's  gates  are  less  the  "  gates  of  Paradise " 
than  the  paradise  of  real  life,  of  nature  and  man. 

How  faithfully  this  historic  city  keeps  the  sternest 
impress  of  feudalism  in  streets  now  alive  with  the 
liberty  of  the  better  day.  The  men  who  built  those 
grated  Romanesque  fortress-palaces,  so  severe  and 
frowning,  of  Cyclopean  stones,  their  only  sign  of 
hospitality  the  questionable  one  of  a  heavy  stone 
seat  running  along  the  front  just  above  the  pave- 
ment, their  only  intimation  of  joy  the  heavy  iron 
rings  inserted  at  intervals  in  the  wall  to  hold  torches 
or  banners  on  festal  days,  made  no  half-way  work  in 
accepting  the  stern  fact  that  every  noble's  palace 
was  his  castle,  stamping  that  faith  into  stone  so  that 
it  should  not  die.  We  shudder  now  at  the  savagism 
of  this  crude  effort  at  civilization  in  the  ages  that 
preceded  our  social  science.  But  they  are  types  of 
social  evolution,  not  to  be  despised,  lest  in  forget- 
ting the  earlier  stages  we  cease  to  honor  the  law 
of  growth.  Man  is  there  and  his  work  is  genuinely 
human.  After  all,  one  can  respect  a  barbarism  that 
leaves  behind  it  coliseums,  or  pyramids,  or  catacombs, 
or  Ellora  caves,  or  Florentine  palaces  to  testify  that, 
unlike  modern  barbarisms  which  have  outlived  their 
day,  it  had  confidence  in  its  own  future,  and  believed 
that  other  ages  should  be  taught  to  honor  it.  The 
negro  slave-pen  and  the  Florentine  palaces,  in  this 
point  of  view,  come  under  very  different  categories  ; 
and  these  stately  piles  bear  record,  not  of  aristocratic 
pride  alone,  or  selfish  and  cruel  greed.  In  the  one 
whose  chambers  beheld  the  fatal  ambition  of  the 
Medici,  Charles  VIII.  of  France,  entering  Florence  to 


FLORENCE.  161 

impose  their  yoke  on  the  citizens,  received  the  com- 
mittee of  the  still  unsubdued  republic.  ''  If  you 
dare  to  speak  so,"  he  said,  "  I  will  order  my  trum- 
pets to  sound."  "  Then,"  replies  Pietro  Capponi, 
"  we  will  order  our  bells  to  be  rung ;  "  and,  starting 
from  his  seat,  he  snatched  the  king's  ultimatum  from 
his  secretary,  and  tore  it  to  shreds  before  his  face. 
The  crowned  invader  trembled  before  the  unarmed 
citizen  and  yielded  the  point. 

The  cloisters  in  Catholic  Europe  testify  to  many 
noble  aspects.  There  is  enduring  meaning  in  those 
serene  and  ample  arcades ;  those  plain  walls  set  with 
small  lunettes  opening  out  from  corridor  and  cell ; 
those  frescoes,  the  republican  element  in  Roman 
Catholic  art,  delineating  pure  lives  and  martyr 
deaths,  the  semi-mythological  biography  of  men  who 
were  really  the  benefactors  of  the  people  in  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  as  they  were  themselves  of  and  from  the 
people  ;  those  stones  within  which  so  many  thought- 
ful souls  have  pondered  the  problem  of  life  and  death ; 
those  spaces  opening  upwards  only,  the  drifting 
world  shut  out ;  those  green  retreats  pleasant  with 
the  changeful  bounty  of  passing  seasons,  yet  them- 
selves unchanged  from  age  to  age  ;  those  memorial 
tablets  and  busts  all  along  the  quiet  corridors,  lead- 
ing from  seclusion  to  seclusion,  reminders  that  there 
were  brave  hearts  and  noble  heads  before  to-day's 
trials  and  tasks,  —  they  are  not  mere  Romish  relies. 
I  wish  we  had  something  analogous  to  them,  only 
secular,  not  technically  religious,  on  the  wild  and 
weary  beats  of  American  city  life. 

The  cloisters  of  San  Marco  are  seven  hundred 
years  old.  Here  was  the  first  public  library  in  Italy. 
The  monks  of  San  Marco  became  famous  for  their 
11 


162  FLORENCE. 

learning,  and  the  convent  was  a  centre  of  literary 
pilgrimage.  Its  Prior  was  at  one  time  the  founder, 
or  reviver,  of  almost  every  benevolent  institution  in 
Florence.  A  society  was  in  existence  for  the  exter- 
mination of  heretics.  Fra  Antonino  changed  it  into 
one  for  saving  orphans  and  neglected  children.  He 
founded  another  for  the  general  care  of  the  poor. 
He  was  often  seen  leading  a  mule  about  the  lonely 
hills,  laden  with  provisions  for  the  sick  and  suffering. 
And  here  is  his  life  in  fresco  by  loving  hands.  The 
painter-monk  Angelico  illuminated  these  cold  walls 
of  corridor  and  cell  with  the  soul  of  color. 

Last  came  a  young  preacher  from  Ferrara,  of  se- 
vere speech  and  impetuous  gesture,  who  had  fled  his 
father's  house,  his  medical  studies  and  hope  of  fame, 
to  follow  his  vision  of  a  palpably  approaching  judg- 
ment day  for  the  crimes  of  Italy,  papal  and  political. 
The  sentiment  and  scholarship  of  these  quiet  cloisters 
did  not  tame  the  ardor  which  had  sought  Florence, 
because  she  was  the  fiery  furnace  of  Italian  passions. 
She  heard  his  lifted  voice  as  one  who  loves  better  the 
tune  of  a  pleasant  instrument  than  the  thunder  of  a 
moral  rebuke.  But  Pico  della  Mirandola,  rising  star 
of  Platonism  and  chief  of  philosophy,  won  and  con- 
quered, reported  to  his  adversaries  that  a  greater  than 
himself  had  come.  Mythology,  of  course,  awoke  at 
the  sight  of  such  genius  for  moving  men.  It  was  re- 
ported that  a  supernatural  glory  invested  his  head 
in  prayer,  and  that  ruffians  went  down  on  their  knees 
at  his  reproof.  It  was  Lorenzo  dei  Medici,  the  chief 
of  Florence,  who  invited  him  to  the  city,  thinking  he 
was  bringing  an  ornament  to  his  magnificence,  not  a 
Nemesis  to  his  pomp  and  pride.  But  he  took  the 
strange,  weird  Apocalypse  for  his  text ;  first  expound- 


FLORENCE.  163 

ing  it  typically  in  tbese  still  cloisters  to  novices, 
then  to  larger  crowds  in  the  cathedral,  reading  more 
and  more  tremendous  meaning  into  the  Bible  words 
as  the  presence  of  the  people  revealed  to  him  their 
perils  and  needs,  and  sparing  no  foe  to  public  virtue 
and  public  liberty.  It  was  in  the  papacy  of  a  Bor- 
gia, when  the  Italian  republics,  dying  of  corruption, 
were  passing  over  to  ferocious  nobles  and  foreign 
kings ;  and  even  Florence,  intoxicated  by  the  bac- 
chanal songs  of  Lorenzo,  turned  over  her  carnival  to 
debauchery  and  riot.  The  convicted  conscience  of 
nobles  and  people  was  smitten,  and  entered  on  the 
ascetic  reaction  to  the  other  extreme. 

Lorenzo  tried  in  vain  to  silence  these  Puritan 
thunders.  He  sent  messengers  to  caution  the  preach- 
er. "Tell  him  who  sent  you,"  was  the  reply,  "to 
repent  of  his  own  doings ;  '  God  is  no  respecter  of 
persons.'  "  The  next  step  was  a  threat  of  banish- 
ment ;  and  the  answer  to  that  was,  "  What  is  banish- 
ment to  me  ?  Your  city  is  but  a  lentil-seed  on  the 
earth.  But  let  Lorenzo  dei  Medici  understand,  that 
though  I  am  but  a  poor  preacher  and  he  the  chief 
citizen,  it  is  I  shall  stay,  and  he  shall  go."  Religion 
was  serving  liberty  and  knew  its  prerogative.  The 
chief  citizen  could  not  get  noticed.  Then  came  un- 
mistakable gold  coin  dropped  into  the  convent  cof- 
fers. And  these  the  incorruptible  Prior  sent  off  for 
alms,  adding  that  "  for  my  convent,  silver  shall  do." 
"  No  soil  this  for  chief  citizens  to  grow  political  vines 
in." 

Not  many  months  passed,  before  the  great  mer- 
chant prince  lay  on  his  death-bed  at  Carreggi  Villa, 
out  on  tlie  purple  hills,  where,  from  his  frescoed  and 
pillared  terrace,  he  could  look  forth  over  the  glories 


164  FLORENCE. 

of  Val  d'Arno  and  claim  it  all  as  the  empire  of  his 
intellect  and  wealth.  Now  all  was  fast  dwindling  be- 
fore an  empire  of  another  kind.  There  was  need,  at 
this  Catholic  death-bed,  of  absolution  for  many  things  ; 
but  how  futile  was  absolution,  if  given  through  ser- 
vility or  fear.  All  his  grandeur  would  he  give  for 
one  honest.  God-fearing  monk,  whose  voice  should  in- 
deed speak  for  the  Church  which,  in  his  thought, 
held  the  keys  of  Life  and  Death.  There  was  but  one 
unmistakably  so  commissioned.  And  he  came  at  the 
call.  "Absolution?  Yes,  but  not  to  the  unrepentant. 
Earth  nor  heaven  can  grant  that.  Wilt  thou  pay 
back  the  funds  embezzled  from  the  children's  sav- 
ings-bank ?  Dost  thou  sincerely  repent  of  all  trans- 
gression ?     And  wilt  thou   put  thy  trust  in  God  ?  " 

"  All  this  I  do." 

One  thing  more.    "  Give  back  liberty  to  Florence  !  " 

Ah,  that  is  too  much.  The  proud  face  turns  to 
the  wall,  and  the  patriot  monk  departs.  Is  not 
Florence  worth  a  hundred  chief  citizens  ?  And  so 
the  democracy  of  religion,  in  the  person  of  this  un- 
awed  monk,  declared  itself  stronger  than  princes, 
irreconcilable  with  tyrants. 

It  was  the  time,  perhaps  the  very  day,  when  Co- 
lumbus, turning  in  despair  from  Santa  Fe,  after 
eighteen  years  of  vain  effort  to  enlist  royal  support 
for  an  enterprise  to  which  the  maps  of  the  Florentine 
Toscanelli  had  inspired  him,  was  suddenly  recalled 
by  Isabella  and  bidden  forth  to  what  was  destined  to 
be  the  discover}^  of  the  New  World.  How  fine  the 
augury  !  Florence  unconsciously  associates  her  lib- 
erties with  grander  political  experiments  on  a  hemi- 
sphere yet  to  rise  out  of  the  unknown  sea. 

We  follow  the  reformer  and  his  perils.     At  Bo- 


FLORENCE.  165 

logna,  a  lady,  whom  he  had  rebuked  for  interrupting 
his  discourses  by  pompously  entering  the  church  with 
a  conspicuous  train  of  servants,  sent  emissaries  to  as- 
sassinate him ;  but  their  courage  failed  before  the 
moral  power  of  the  man.  Then  he  publicly  an- 
nounced that  he  should  return  to  Florence  that  same 
evening,  on  foot  over  the  mountains.  Overcome  by 
faintness  on  the  way,  he  was  restored  by  a  vision 
announcing  to  him  that  his  mission  on  earth  was  yet 
unfulfilled.  In  the  plague  which  desolated  the  city, 
he  refused  to  take  measures  for  his  own  safety  and 
remained  to  watch  over  those  under  his  charge. 

From  his  pulpit  he  continued  to  sway  the  masses, 
stilling  party  strifes,  but  thundering  at  the  licentious- 
ness and  temporal  ambition  of  the  clergy.  Forbidden 
to  preach,  he  kept  quiet  awhile,  but  returned  at  the 
call  of  public  need.  He  expelled  the  Medici,  gave 
Florence  the  freest  constitution  she  ever  enjoyed, 
made  the  French  king,  at  the  head  of  an  invading 
army,  tremble  before  his  warnings  in  the  name  of 
God,  and  forced  him  to  respect  the  freedom  of  the 
city.  He  established  savings-banks  for  the  poor,  in- 
troduced the  Italian  in  place  of  the  Latin  language 
into  public  documents,  reorganized  criminal  adminis- 
tration upon  a  popular  basis,  and  so  reformed  a  licen- 
tious city,  that  it  resolved  itself  into  a  theocracy. 
Even  Machiavelli,  Giannotti,  Guicciardini  unite  in 
unstinted  praise  of  the  political  genius  and  public 
service  of  the  inspired  monk.^  But  the  hour  had 
arrived,  as  the  hour  will,  for  nations  that  wait  to  be 
scourged  into  right  doing,  "  when  no  man  could 
work."     The  reaction  came,  though  for  a  while  he 

1  See  full  notices  of  these  testimonies  in  Villari's  admirable  Bi- 
ography of  Savonarola,  1859.  Lib.  ii.  c.  v. 


166  FLORENCE. 

carried  the  city  with  him,  against  Vatican  abroad 
and  vice  at  home.  He  had  suppressed  immoralities, 
but  alas,  had  encouraged  the  religious  superstitions 
that  are  as  perilous  as  immorality.  The  reaction 
came  in  the  interest  of  party  and  aristocratic  hate,  of 
the  passionate  revenge  of  a  pope,  against  whose  vices 
he  had  appealed  to  the  whole  Catholic  Church,  and 
of  the  deeply  rooted  vice  of  a  city  which  could  not 
be  galvanized  into  righteousness  by  a  day's  religious 
revivalism.  I  will  not  here  detail  the  sad  history  of 
his  fall,  a  sacrifice  mainly,  after  all,  to  that  faith  in 
Divine  miraculous  interposition  which  he  shared  with 
that  whole  age,  and  which  the  ages  have  not  yet 
thrown  off.  He  had  allowed  a  follower  to  gratify 
the  popular  faith  by  offering  to  go  through  the  orr 
deal  of  flame,  to  prove  his  inspiration  ;  and  the  thing 
naturally  ended  in  a  farce,  not  to  the  advantage  of 
his  reputation.  A  more  real  trial  by  fire  was  to 
come,  and  in  his  own  person.  I  cannot  describe  the 
mock  assizes,  the  cruel  torture,  the  final  horror  of  the 
scene,  when  an  insane  rabble,  watching  the  flames 
swaying  round  his  body  in  the  wind,  half  expected  a 
miracle  for  his  deliverance,  and  even  believed  that 
they  beheld  his  hand  stretched  forth  to  bless  his  mur- 
derers out  of  the  tongues  of  fire,  while  he  repeated 
the  crucifixion  triumph  of  love. 

Essentially  a  spiritual  man,  a  whole-hearted  be- 
liever in  the  immanent  presence  of  God,  the  omnipo- 
tence of  love,  and  the  identity  of  prayer  with  all 
noble  conduct ;  combining  the  exaltation  of  a  He- 
brew prophet  with  the  simplicity  of  a  child  ;  march- 
ing straight  to  the  stake  as  his  destiny ;  saying 
when  a  Cardinal's  red  cap  was  offered  him,  "  Mine 
rather   must   be  the  red  cap  of   blood ;  "  strangely 


FLORENCE.  167 

calm  in  the  midst  of  these  terrible  civil  strifes,  when 
every  one  else  seemed  a  creature  of  gusty  passion ;  if 
a  fanatic,  preserving  such  hold  on  the  everlasting 
principles  of  free  government  as  to  approve  himself 
to  the  best  statesmen  and  patriots  of  Italy  in  his  day  ; 
if  sharing  the  superstitions  of  his  day,  more  logical 
than  later  co-believers,  in  that  he  believed  his  God 
of  signs  and  wonders  to  be  present  with  signs  and 
wonders  still.  It  is  not  Savonarola  alone  who  iden- 
tifies inspiration  with  violation  of  nature,  and  won- 
der-working with  the  authority  of  religion. 

It  is  touching  to  see  him  struggling  to  direct  that 
stormy  age,  yet  drawn  by  his  struggle  into  the  centre 
of  the  storm,  his  martyrdom  its  culmination.  His 
face,  as  the  painters  have  rendered  it,  is  the  por- 
traiture of  that  deep,  concentrated  passion  for  self- 
abandonment  to  which  the  Christian  Church  of  the 
Middle  Ages  gave  the  name  of  love,  a  mystic  rap- 
ture inconceivable  since.  He  is  the  Cassandra  of 
the  last  days  of  Florentine  greatness ;  his  eye  caught 
and  held  by  the  presentiment  of  a  coming  penalty 
on  rulers  and  people,  for  which  the  Biblical  spirit  of 
his  age  had  but  one  form  of  utterance.  "  Repent  or 
ye  perish,  for  the  day  of  the  Lord  is  at  hand."  He 
was  no  mere  image-breaker,  no  mere  frantic  bigot. 
He  burnt  no  Servetus  like  Calvin ;  he  burnt  only 
a  heap  of  licentious  books,  dresses,  masks,  songs,  and 
other  things  associated  like  these  with  a  debauched 
state  of  society;  collected  by  troops  of  boys  from 
the  dwellings  of  a  self-reproving  city,  into  the  great 
square  and  disappearing  into  their  elements  to  the 
sound  of  Signoria  trumpets  and  Campanile  bells, 
while  the  children,  in  white  robes  with  olive  branches 
and  red  crosses,  marched  around  the  bonfire,  singing 


168  FLORENCE. 

Savonarola's  hymns  in  place  of  the  old  bacchanal 
songs  usual  at  the  time.  At  all  events  it  was  a 
carnival  where,  for  once,  nobody  was  stoned  nor 
maltreated,  and  where  one  may  pardon  much,  if  to 
nothing  else,  at  least  to  the  popular  reaction  against 
intemperance,  for  ages  the  occasion  of  half  the  mis- 
eries and  more  than  half  the  most  barbarous  crimes 
of  mankind.  Sensational,  to  be  sure,  and  a  piece  of 
heady  revivalism,  bound  to  be  short-lived  in  its 
moral  effects.  Nor  was  a  republic  even  then,  far  less 
is  it  now,  to  be  converted  into  a  close  corporation 
of  confessors,  a  so-called  kingdom  of  Christ,  by  any 
theological  tinkering  of  constitution  and  laws.  But 
of  the  bonfire  in  Florence  streets,  this  at  least  is  true, 
that  no  work  of  genuine  art  perished  in  it,  no  book, 
painting,  or  statue  that  deserved  to  live.  The  proph- 
et, whom  Buonarotti  and  Bartolommeo  loved  and 
by  whom  Angelico  was  almost  adored,  could  not 
have  failed  in  the  finer  aesthetic  sense.  The  monk 
who  induced  his  fraternity  to  purchase  with  their 
own  earnings  the  magnificent  library  of  the  exiled 
Medici  and  place  it  in  the  convent  collection  which 
was  already  open  to  the  public,  might  be  permitted 
without  special  blame  to  destroy  a  few  copies  of  Boc- 
caccio's Decamerone  and  other  like  slime  of  genius. 
He  stands  on  the  border  line  between  the  Middle 
Ages  and  our  modern  time ;  a  Catholic  who  de- 
nounced the  temporal  power  of  the  papacy  as  the 
ruin  of  its  spiritual ;  a  thinker  who  dared  to  affirm 
that  reason  must  not  be  sacrificed  to  faith.  His 
crime  was  nevertheless,  not  heterodoxy,  so  much  as, 
first,  love  of  Florentine  freedom,  and,  next,  defiance 
of  a  Borgian  pope ;  yet  he  aimed  at  no  less  than  the 
radical  moral  purification  of  the  Christian  Church. 


FLORENCE.  169 

"  I  stand  here  because  the  Lord  hath  sent  me,  and  I 
wait  his  word.  Then  will  I  raise  a  voice  that  shall 
be  heard  throughout  Christendom,  and  make  the 
body  of  the  Church  tremble." 

At  the  end  of  a  long,  bare  corridor  in  the  convent 
of  San  Marco,  set  with  little  dormitory  doors,  are  two 
small  vaulted  rooms,  eight  feet  by  twelve  in  size,  ap- 
proached through  a  larger  apartment,  now  used  for  a 
chapel.  Each  has  a  tiny  round-arched  window  set 
deep  in  the  stone.  They  are  empty  and  dreary,  and 
nothing  tells  their  history,  but  the  Latin  inscription, 
to  this  effect :  "  In  these  cells  dwelt  the  venerable 
Father  Jerome  Savonarola,  an  apostolic  man."  Such 
the  confession  of  the  Church  which  excommunicated 
and  burned  him. 

The  Signoria  of  Florence,  fearing  lest  his  ashes 
might  work  miracles  dangerous  to  his  enemies,  cast 
them  into  the  Arno.  Pico,  the  Platonic  philosopher, 
fished  up  what  he  imagined  a  piece  of  his  heart  and 
kept  it  to  cure  diseases  and  exorcise  demons.  The 
papal  commissioners  pronounced  him  neither  monk 
nor  man,  but  a  monster  compounded  of  every  crime. 
From  every  side  his  murderers  received  the  congratu- 
lations of  the  Church.  But  the  superstitious  terror, 
idolatry,  and  hate  alike  have  passed.  And  the  rec- 
ord of  a  nineteenth  century  historian  is  this  :  "  Two 
Italians  initiated  the  modern  age.  Columbus  opened 
the  path  of  the  sea,  Savonarola  that  of  the  soul. 
Each  touched  with  his  hand  a  new  world  whose  im- 
mensity he  could  not  comprehend.  The  one  was  re- 
warded with  chains,  the  other  with  fire.  Savonarola 
sought  to  reconcile  reason  and  faith,  religion  and 
liberty.  With  the  Council  of  Constance,  Dante,  and 
Arnold  of  Brescia,  he  opened  that  work  of  reforma- 


170  FLORENCE. 

tion  which  has  been  the  eternal  aspiration  of  all 
great  Italians." 

With  this  sacrifice  of  her  last  saint,  the  liberty  of 
Florence  perished,  and  with  liberty,  art.  While 
Michael  Angelo  and  Raphael  lived,  sculpture  and 
painting  indeed  survived ;  but  they  had  no  suc- 
cessors. The  reverent  simplicity  and  tender  grace 
passed  out  of  her  architecture  and  her  life  at  one  and 
the  same  moment.  Nothing  else  in  Florentine  archi- 
tecture is  so  satisfactory  as  that  thirteenth  and  four- 
teenth century  work.  I  rejoice  to  see  that  it  is  com- 
ing back  into  view  in  America,  in  Boston,  where  are 
specimens  of  it  or  parts  of  it. 

With  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  po- 
litical corruption  and  social  demoralization  which  be- 
gan with  Savonarola's  fall,  had  fully  set  in.  Charles 
of  Germany  and  Clement  of  Rome  laid  hands  on  the 
doomed  city,  and  gave  her  over  to  the  returning 
Medici ;  and  Michael  Angelo,  stern  and  sad,  after 
vain  efforts  to  save  her,  refusing  to  build  a  fortress 
intended  to  overawe  her,  put  his  sorrow  into  the 
Night  and  Day  and  that  woe- worn  face  under  the 
awful  helmet. 

After  this  is  no  more  great  art.  The  Renaissance, 
so  called,  has  set  in  with  its  idle  frippery,  its  vain- 
glorious upholstery  in  stone,  its  death-cold  horizon- 
tality,  its  meretricious  display.  Everything  the  last 
three  centuries  have  done,  in  Italian  architecture,  is 
the  offensive  debris  of  an  era  of  political  degradation. 
But  the  two  have  ended  together,  and  the  earliest 
years  of  Italian  liberty  are  signalized  by  a  revival  of 
the  taste  and  genius  of  the  elder  day.  Let  us  pass 
over  this  chasm  of  three  centuries  and  greet  the  long- 
deferred  morning  of  a  better  age. 


FLORENCE.  171 

Sunday,  the  sixteenth  of  March,  1861,  was  a  day 
on  which  it  was  well  for  an  American  to  be  in  Flor- 
ence. On  that  day,  —  for  Catholicism  is  not  Puri- 
tan and  does  not  keep  a  Lord's  day  separate  from 
days  o'f  secular  freedom  and  patriotic  joy,  —  the  jubi- 
lant city  celebrated  the  proclamation  of  Victor  Em- 
manuel as  constitutional  king  of  Italy  by  the  United 
Parliament  of  Turin,  by  a  military  review,  by  a  corso 
and  the  indispensable  salvo  of  cannon  and  bells. 
The  whole  city  was  hung  with  clusters  of  glass  globes 
flashing  in  the  sun.  Their  Hnes  ran  along  arch  and 
parapet  and  corbelled  eaves ;  up  tower  and  spire,  and 
round  antique  columns,  swept  the  tide  of  crystal  gar- 
lands, among  tricolors,  green,  white,  and  red,  which 
floated  from  every  window,  and  canopied  every  way. 
Florence  was  a  city  of  bubbles  and  an  Aladdin's  palace 
of  dreams.  Alas  !  how  symbolic  of  Italian  aspiration 
for  three  hundred  years  was  the  vanishing  glory ! 

Oriental  feasts  of  lanterns  and  childish  pipe-bub- 
bles, shall  this  also  be  mere  yeast  and  spume  ?  No, 
the  glorious  moment  gave  it  a  meaning  beyond  the 
fact.  Twenty  years  before,  a  mild  despotism  was 
corroding  Italy,  the  murderous  policy  of  Austrian 
Metternich :  "  My  master  desires  to  abolish  all  idea 
of  Italian  unity,  to  reduce  Italy  to  a  geographical 
expression."  It  was  my  fortune  to  have  seen  her 
apparently  hopeless  degradation  in  1844-1845,  and 
now  to  be  able  to  compare  with  that  the  high  promise 
of  this  real  resurrection.  The  terrible  experience  of 
1849  had  not  been  in  vain  ;  the  premature  revolt, 
stifled  by  local  jealousies,  city  rivalries,  treachery  of 
Eome  and  Naples  ;  the  spectacle  of  Piedmont  hurried 
into  unequal  war  by  reckless  promises  and  then  aban- 
doned ;  her  chivalrous  king,  victim  of  heartless  polit- 


172  FLORENCE. 

ical  cabal,  spurring  against  the  foe  along  the  lost 
field  of  Xovara,  groaning,  "  Is  there  no  cannon-ball 
for  me  ?  "  and  dying  discouraged  and  broken-hearted. 
Not  in  vain,  the  spectacle  of  the  little  subalpine  state 
reared  to  political  and  religious  liberty,  and  to  Eu- 
ropean position,  by  the  democratic  spirit  of  Victor 
Emmanuel,  the  refining  virtue  of  D'Azeglio,  and  the 
diplomacy  of  Cavour.  A  race  impassioned  rather 
than  intellectual,  dazzled  by  the  exclusively  local  tra- 
ditions of  more  than  a  score  of  historic  cities,  the  Ital- 
ians had  to  learn  the  indispensableness  of  unity,  and 
in  twenty  yeai's  had  passed  from  political  childhood 
to  manhood  calm,  serious,  aware  of  the  conditions  of 
liberty  and  the  price  it  demands.  Coming  respon- 
sibiUties  had  changed  the  countenance  of  the  light- 
hearted  race,  and  sent  away  its  childish  dreams  like 
the  coarse  torch-games  and  monstrous  masks  of  the 
old  carnival  nights.  But  the  manly  compensations 
have  come.  A  free  and  cheap  press  has  made  Italy 
one  living  body  sensitive  in  every  fibre  to  the  suffer- 
ings and  desires  of  every  other.  Looking  at  the 
crowds  that  gathered  about  the  windows  where  the 
daily  papers  are  put  up,  you  would  have  thought 
yourself  in  America,  for  the  frank  generosity  and 
zeal  with  which  the  whole  day's  issue  of  news  was 
exposed  to  public  Yiew. 

Garibaldi,  Mazzini,  Cavour,  —  how  diverse  the 
policies,  how  bitter  the  personal  outbreaks  of  polit- 
ical passion  I  I  thought  they  would  burst  that  first 
National  Parliament  at  Turin  as  a  volcano  bursts  the 
mountain  it  has  upheaved  in  an  hour.  But  both 
the  red-shirted  warrior  and  the  wary  diplomat  knew 
that  Italy  was  more  than  policies  or  leaders,  and  at 
the  word  of  Victor  Emmanuel  joined  their  hands,  in 


FLOEENCE.  173 

at  least  seeming  harmony.  Even  Mazzini,  the  un- 
compromising republican,  postponed  his  protests  to 
accept  the  national  will,  and  patiently  awaited  his 
time. 

A  vast  multitude  gathered  in  the  Duomo,  as  when 
the  Puritan  Savonarola  thundered  there  of  coming 
judgment.  What  an  hour  to  reverse  that  sentence 
in  the  name  of  religion  and  indorse  the  new  hope  ! 
Had  the  archbishop  under  the  gorgeous  canopy  come 
to  bless  the  people's  right  ?  Ah,  no,  it  was  to  honor 
the  declaimer  from  Milan,  who  was  to  give  voice  to 
the  dislike  of  the  ecclesiastical  powers  to  the  innova- 
tion of  free  speech  and  free  government.  Not  one 
word  of  sympathy  with  the  enthusiasm  which  had 
robed  the  city  in  glory !  Instead  of  that,  denuncia- 
tion of  every  liberal  element  in  European  theology 
or  politics,  the  old  death's-head  of  stagnation  and 
decay. 

But,  whatever  be  true  of  ecclesiasticism  elsewhere, 
in  Italy  it  must  subserve  liberty.  Italy  still  loves 
the  Catholic  dogma,  rite,  historic  associations ;  loves 
their  appeal  to  the  affections,  the  spiritual  needs, 
their  affirmation  of  universal  brotherhood  ;  but  not 
the  ecclesiastical  discipline,  or  the  temporal  sover- 
eignty. On  the  other  hand,  Protestantism  can  make 
little  progress  there,  even  under  best  advantages, 
even  in  Piedmont,  the  plain  that  stretches  out  be- 
neath the  mountain  eyrie  of  the  Vaudois.  The  in- 
tuitive genius  of  the  race  overleaps  the  half-way  logic 
of  the  sects,  and  passes  over  to  rationalism  when  it 
escapes  the  old  traditions.  It  is  not  the  papacy  that 
can  hold  it  back;  and  the  people  have  discovered 
very  rapidly  that  they  can  worship  without  an  Italian 
bishop  as  well  as  be  ruled  without  a  foreign  king. 


174  FLORENCE. 

What  holds  them  to  Catholicism  is  the  best  thing  in 
Catholicism,  —  the  mother-heart  of  Mary.  It  has  lived 
the  longest,  and  will  be  the  point  of  transition  to  a 
religion  of  larger  liberty  and  light.  The  Catholic 
Church  has  no  dispensation  from  the  universal  law  of 
change.  Faith  in  the  nation  had  come  to  recast  the 
Church.  Many  had  been  crowned  kings  of  Italy  be- 
fore ;  but  there  was  never  an  Italy  to  answer  to  the 
crown.  That  day  it  meant  the  united  will  of  twenty- 
two  millions,  consecrated  by  the  magnanimous  sur- 
render of  splendid  municipal  traditions  to  a  common 
stock,  sealed  by  the  solemn  act  of  a  deliberative  Par- 
liament, represented  by  a  king  who  had  risked  his 
crown  and  life  for  the  sake  of  the  nation.  That 
evening  Florence  illuminated  her  froth  of  bubbles 
from  a  sea  of  central  fire.  So,  along  the  line  of  way, 
bridge,  arch,  parapet,  and  pier,  ran  the  shining  host 
reflected  in  quivering  shafts  in  the  river,  every 
spear  there  pointing  to  its  star  above.  The  graceful 
sweep  of  the  Lungo  I'Arno  was  a  double  line  as  of 
twining  palm-trees,  and  flaming  cressets  beset  the 
roof  of  the  corridor  that  reaches  from  the  gallery  of 
art  to  the  palace  of  law.  A  mysterious  moving  in- 
ward light,  as  the  hidden  flames  swayed  in  the  wind, 
gave  the  stately  bell-tower  of  Giotto,  standing  up 
strong  and  beautiful,  with  the  deep-toned  bell  rever- 
berating within  it,  the  semblance  of  a  living  soul, 
while  the  mass  surging  below  were  like  shadows  cast 
from  its  substance.  The  flaring  cressets  of  the  great 
dome  seemed  bursting  from  within,  not  resting  on 
the  surface,  and  gave  a  like  vitality  to  the  whole 
majestic  pile.  A  world  of  hidden  fire  was  struggling 
into  freedom,  and  every  neighboring  tower  and  spire 
shot  to  heaven  its  answering  tongue  of  flame.     Every 


FLORENCE.  175 

window,  arch,  and  cornice  of  the  Pitti  Palace  was 
outlined  in  points  of  light,  while  the  huge  stone  walls 
were  invisible,  so  that  in  the  starless  night  it  stood 
out  in  black  space  a  palace  sketched  in  stars.  Was 
all  this  splendor  of  symbolism  a  childish  dream  ?  In 
the  compact  mass  that  swayed  along  the  great  thor- 
oughfares, there  was  no  disorder,  no  ill-humor,  no 
violation  of  good  breeding,  —  a  fact  I  noted  in  all 
great  public  gatherings  in  Northern  Italy,  political  or 
religious,  without  exception. 

Down  the  main  historic  street  came  Young  Italy, 
with  torches  and  banners,  singing  Garibaldian  songs, 
cheering  Rome  and  Venice,  whose  incorporation  with 
the  new  kingdom  was  the  only  step  lacking  to  Italian 
unity,  and  whose  bitter  captivity  and  appeal  for  de- 
liverance were  the  theme  of  press  and  pictured  wall 
throughout  the  land.  In  Florence,  the  restraining 
force  at  that  time  required  for  national  preservation, 
which  Cavour  exerted  at  Turin,  was  wielded  by 
Bettino  Ricasoli.  His  imperturbable  will  had  the 
respect  of  all  parties,  and  Young  Italy  in  Florence,  at 
least,  did  not  overstep  the  limits  of  order. 

During  the  ten  years  which  followed  the  Austrian 
restoration,  the  guard  disarmed,  the  Constitution 
overridden  by  military  tribunals,  the  press  sup- 
pressed, freedom  of  religion  prohibited,  capital  pun- 
ishment revived,  citizens  flogged,  the  people  fired  on 
while  hanging  garlands  on  the  tablets  of  their  mar- 
tyrs to  liberty,  —  Ricasoli's  wisdom  safely  directed 
the  gathering  storm.  And  so  when  the  hour  came,  the 
citizens  rose  with  dignity  on  their  oppressors,  and 
without  shedding  a  drop  of  blood,  or  transgressing 
civil  order,  turned  the  cannon  which  their  ruler  had 
pointed  at  his  people  and  dismissed  him  under  escort, 


176  FLOBENCE. 

to  disappear  forever  behind  the  sunny  hills  of  Tus- 
cany into  the  black  Austrian  north  from  whence  he 
came. 

What  elasticity  and  perseverance  in  this  national 
resuiTection,  spite  of  its  inevitable  blunders  !  It  was 
strange  to  hear  Young  Italy  applauding  the  united 
portraits  of  Victor  Emmanuel  and  Louis  Napoleon, 
the  interwoven  flags  of  Italy  and  France.  Thrice 
already  had  she  been  betrayed  by  the  crowned  de- 
ceiver at  Paris,  —  at  Rome,  at  Villaf ranca,  at  Nice. 
Yet  they  hoped  against  evidence  that  a  "despot 
might  will  to  set  men  free."'  Was  the  trust  of  a 
brave  people  ever  more  cruelly  met?  Year  after 
year  this  modern  Prometheus  waited,  bound  to  the 
rock,  an  impassioned  heart  doomed  to  count  the 
weary  ebbing  of  opportunity  and  to  turn  its  zeal  and 
devotion  into  the  agony  of  hope  deferred  ;  while  that 
outrageous  intrusion  of  a  French  army  forbade  the 
inauguration  of  the  king  in  his  national  capital,  till 
the  unceasing  exhortation  and  warnings  of  Mazzini 
and  Garibaldi  were  justified  in  the  rude  breaking  up 
of  all  cherished  dreams  of  French  sympathy.  And 
then  it  was  plain  to  see  that  the  long  thwarted  nation 
had  not  bated  one  jot  of  hope.  From  discourage- 
ments even  sadder  than  his  wounds.  Garibaldi  could 
greet  with  kindly  eyes  the  emancipation  of  the  Amer- 
ican slave. 

The  great  diplomatist  in  whom  all  hopes  had  cen- 
tred was  suddenly  withdrawn ;  and,  as  it  always  is 
when  a  ojreat  leader  dies  in  the  crisis  of  the  fiorht  for 
freedom  and  nationality,  all  seemed  lost  with  Cavour. 
But  lo,  then  the  grandest  and  most  needed  lesson,  — 
that  the  cause  did  not  stand  by  personal  strength  or 
skill  so  much  as  by  the  gravitations  of  human  nature 


FLORENCE.  177 

and  its  unerring  laws,  the  true  and  only  saviors  of 
the  world.  Here  again,  as  in  so  many  past  emergen- 
cies, Florence  contributed  the  man  for  the  hour,  — 
austere,  self-involved,  gloved,  and  buttoned  to  the 
chin,  a  patriot  if  an  aristocrat,  with  look  at  once  to 
the  future  and  the  past,  Teutonic  nerve  and  Italian 
heart.  Still,  bitter  drawbacks  follow  on  the  days  of 
enthusiasm  I  have  tried  to  describe.  The  people, 
cheated  again  of  the  unity  that  seemed  within  their 
grasp  by  the  wretched  policies  of  France  and  Prus- 
sia, turned  in  on  themselves  for  a  season  almost  in 
reaction.  For  years  Italy  was  rent  by  satellites  of 
Napoleoi>  and  Jesuits  in  disguise,  resolved  on  fore- 
closing the  possibility  of  acquiring  Venice  and  Rome. 
Even  Ricasoli  dissolved  a  parliament  because  it 
refused  to  restore  sequestrated  church  property  to  its 
old  possessors  for  a  price.  The  youth  who  rose  at 
Garibaldi's  summons  in  1867  with  the  cry  of  '^  Rome, 
or  Death,"  were  mowed  down  by  French  chassepots 
at  Monte  Rotondo,  and  the  civilized  world  looked  on 
while  France  tested  her  new  guns  on  heroic  boys, 
and  the  army  of  Victor  Emmanuel  stood  by  with 
folded  arms,  because  a  shameful  "  September  Conven- 
tion "  had  been  extorted  from  Italy  in  repayment  to 
France  for  her  half-way  help  in  1861.  No  possibility 
of  organization  remained,  nor  of  a  respected  govern- 
ment, and  so  the  land  went  over  to  anarchy,  swarm- 
ing with  bandits  defying  law.  It  was  not  for  the 
interest  of  her  powerful  neighbors  that  Italy  should 
be  a  European  power ;  they  would  fret  and  tantalize 
their  victim  till  her  heart  should  go  down  in  despair. 
Even  a  parliament  of  long-tried  patriots  seemed  dis- 
posed to  yield  to  the  spell  of  these  demoralizing 
forces,  and  the  king  himself   was  not  beyond  suspi- 

12 


178  FLORENCE. 

cion  of  playing  into  their  hands.  But  Italy  was  not 
to  die.  Her  John  Brown  was  not  wanting.  Gari- 
baldi's raid  on  Naples  joined  the  south  to  the  north, 
and  gave  Victor  Emmanuel  the  chance  to  drop  that 
enforced  submission  which  had  made  him  imprison 
his  noblest  subject.  A  new  thrill  went  irresistibly 
through  the  nation ;  leagues  were  formed  to  buy  no 
French  goods  and  have  no  dealings  with  Frenchmen. 

The  lesson  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  was  learned 
which  Bruno,  and  Mario,  and  Bernardino  Ochino, 
and  Arnold  of  Brescia,  and  Savonarola,  and  a  long 
line  of  great  Italians  had  sealed  with  their  blood,  in 
prison,  or  exile,  or  noble  warfare.  Then  came  the 
guerdon  of  nature  to  their  constancy  and  cheer.  To 
the  true,  even  nations  come  round.  Prussia,  once  the 
evil  genius  of  Italy,  became  perforce  her  liberator. 
In  1866  Koniggratz  gave  Venetia;  in  1870  Sedan 
gave  Rome.  At  last,  politically  as  well  as  in  enthusi- 
asm of  prophecy,  "Italia  e."  The  religious  question 
hastens  to  a  crisis  that  can  have  but  one  settlement. 
Reconciliation  with  the  secular  arm  is  already  recom- 
mended by  distinguished  Catholics  as  the  policy  of 
the  future.  Elementary  education  has  been  declared 
not  only  gratuitous  and  obligatory,  as  it  had  already 
been  since  1859,  but  secular  also.  Religious  instruc- 
tion is  remanded  to  the  care  of  the  family,  which  is 
now  free  from  the  enforced  intrusion  of  a  priesthood. 

Nor  can  it  be  regarded,  in  the  present  condition 
of  the  popular  mind,  as  other  than  a  good  sign,  that 
Italy,  already  provided  with  thirteen  academies  of 
the  fine  arts  and  all  the  splendid  intellectual  tradi- 
tions of  her  cities,  shows  just  now  a  diminution  in 
the  number  of  pupils  attending  the  higher  schools 
and  an  increase  in  those  of  the  lower.     Not  that  the 


FLORENCE.  179 

former  class  of  schools  is  neglected :  Milan  academy, 
for  example,  has  fourteen  hundred  students.  The 
gifted  race  has  not  forgotten  to  dream  of  great  things, 
and  its  great  dreams  are  now  of  useful  things,  becom- 
ing the  dawn  of  national  unity.  Plans  for  popular 
education,  industrial  organization,  revival  of  science 
and  literature,  renovating  worn-out  lands,  redeeming 
unhealthy  marshes,  clearing  the  Tiber  from  the  slime 
of  ages,  opening  Rome  to  commerce  by  the  old  port 
of  Ostia  and  the  pier  of  Hadrian,  utilizing  the  splen- 
did harbors  of  the  peninsula,  exhuming  buried  art, — 
are  only  limited  by  the  poverty  of  the  just  emerging 
state.  Political  construction  suffers  as  yet  from  that 
inevitable  consequence  of  a  period  of  degeneracy,  the 
lack  of  wise  and  cultured  leaders.  Statesmen  are  not 
made  in  an  hour,  nor  without  schooling  of  a  great 
public  conscience.  For  three  centuries  the  world  has 
gone  to  her,  not  to  honor  the  living,  but  to  brood 
over  the  dead,  wondering,  — 

"  Alas,  this  Italy  has  too  long  swept 
Heroic  ashes  up  for  hour-glass  sand." 

But  she  was  not  dead.  In  some  shadowy  fashion 
the  continuity  of  national  being  and  hope  was  pre- 
served in  those  thirty  sundered  cities,  each  hugging 
its  own  glorious  memories  in  its  sleep. 

Liberty  answered  the  cry  of  Garibaldi  in  Rome 
and  Naples  ;  and  Venetia  welcomed  its  deliverers  ; 
and  even  the  mild  despotism  of  the  last  Austrian 
archdukes,  so  long  as  it  was  unresisted,  had  spared 
the  old  fine  manners  and  tastes  of  the  Tuscans,  and 
shown  no  lack  of  interest  in  practical  philanthropic 
works.  It  was  domestic  life  that  suffered  most  in 
the  long  epoch  of  foreign  sway,  when  no  manly  aims 
were  allowed  to  quicken  manhood,  and  no  social  inde- 


180  FLORENCE. 

pendence  in  men  or  women,  to  give  dignity  or  self- 
respect  to  the  amenities  of  home.  But  the  native 
genius  is  now  free  to  rehabilitate  the  hearths,  so 
long  deserted  for  the  theatre,  cafe,  club-room,  in  the 
insanity  of  social  and  political  despair.  The  bare, 
mouldy,  barrack-like  stories,  the  desolate  stairways, 
the  blind  alleys,  the  dreary  stateliness  of  which  only 
stone  is  capable,  will  warm  into  nineteenth  century 
homes.  The  jealous  seclusion  of  maidens,  the  shal- 
low listlessness  of  woman  in  a  race  which  was  once 
so  prolific  of  cultured  women,  in  the  college  of  Bo- 
logna and  the  palaces  of  Florence,  are  explicable 
enough  by  causes  now  speedily  to  be  removed.  Great 
duties  and  interests  will  develop  a  thoughtful  middle- 
class,  and  secure  a  national  system  of  education  in 
place  of  the  old  clerical  schools. 

Shall  there  be  no  resurrection  for  native  art? 
Look  into  the  eyes  of  the  Florentine  peasant  lads  and 
ask  if  the  genius  of  Giotto,  the  shepherd  boy,  is  gone 
from  his  native  hills.  What  a  climate  is  this  Italian ; 
by  its  kindliness  so  attempered  to  the  human  frame, 
that  the  nerves  are  saved  from  all  that  rasping  and 
rending  by  atmospheric  demons,  which  in  less  favored 
zones  distract  and  thwart  us,  and  the  faculties  enjoy 
their  free  play  like  children  tempted  out  by  the  sun- 
shine and  breeze,  —  the  very  climate  to  foster  genius 
in  its  highest  forms  !  And  what  a  race  is  this  Ital- 
ian ;  the  rich  outcome  of  an  infinite  intermixture 
from  the  old  da3"S  of  Roman  conquests,  pouring  to- 
gether the  blood  of  all  tribes  of  the  earth,  and  gath- 
ering up  their  cultures  and  their  gifts  to  the  later 
attractions  of  Italy,  as  the  constant  magnet  of  Chris- 
tian nations  and  the  battle-field  of  European  states. 
Shall  we  wonder  at  the  fact,  strangely  enough  but 


FLORENCE.  181 

little  noticed,  that  as  England  has  given  the  great 
practical  interests,  and  Germany  the  great  metaphy- 
sicians, and  France  the  great  mathematicians  and 
masters  in  method  and  expression,  so  Italy  has  till 
recently  shone  beyond  other  lands  in  genius  for  orig- 
inal discovery,  and  in  the  intuition  which  initiates 
fresh  spheres  of  thought,  and  opens  new  worlds. 

Relaxed  and  unstrung  as  this  antique  nerve  has 
been,  its  fibre  is  not  spent  nor  spoiled.  Let  us  doubt 
no  more  the  future  of  Italy.  We  should  know  that 
it  takes  time  to  earn  a  national  conscience.  But  we 
do  not  know  what  help  to  winning  thereof  there  is 
in  inheriting  through  twenty  centuries  an  historic 
crown  ;  in  the  inspiration  of  thirty  ancient  seats  of 
arts  and  arms,  every  city  of  them  a  ganglion  of  his- 
toric fire.  Such  a  product  of  the  genius  of  humanity 
does  not  die.  It  is  an  immortality  of  evolution ;  its 
changes  but  the  correlation  of  persistent  ideal  force. 
The  glowing  marbles  of  the  dead  will  no  longer  make 
more  ghostlike  the  deathly  faces  of  the  living. 

From  these  golden  hills  of  Florence,  Galileo  and 
Dante  will  bless  the  consummation  they  heralded  in 
pain.  Saxon  and  Puritan,  England  and  America, 
will  share  the  benediction,  pilgrims  to  sainted  graves. 
For  here,  beneath  the  cypresses  that  look  off  to  the 
purple  Apennines  and  their  white  crowns,  rest  the 
heart  and  brain  of  one  who  knew  not  how  to  be 
weary  of  serving  justice,  freedom,  and  love  ;  his  her- 
oism resting  in  the  bosom  of  his  piety ;  his  ampler 
humanity  sounding  rare  resources  of  knowledge  and 
faith,  and  gathering  them  home  to  practical  use  ;  his 
function  mediative  and  judicial,  to  break  the  living 
bread  of  natural  religion  to  the  people  and  to  burn 
up  the  chaff  of  superstition  with  unquenchable  fire. 


182  FLORENCE. 

And  if  his  work  was  initial,  not  final,  and  new  state- 
ments come  with  advancing  liberties,  none  the  less  is 
the  memory  of  Theodore  Parker  a  national  inspira- 
tion, as  of  one  who,  in  those  deep  spheres  where  the 
thought  and  conscience  of  a  people  are  born  and  fed, 
destroyed  only  that  he  might  build,  and  swept  away 
vain  traditions  that  he  might  found  the  people's  lib- 
erty in  the  laws  of  science  and  the  soul. 

Nor  will  any  true  American  fail  for  Elizabeth  Bar- 
rett Browning's  sake  to  love  the  city  of  her  adop- 
tion. In  the  days  to  come,  when  England  and  Amer- 
ica shall  be  bound  more  closely  than  ever  by  their 
indissoluble  ties  of  nature  and  culture,  it  will  not  be 
forgotten  that  she  who  once  with  heavy  heart  wrote 
the  righteous  anathema  across  the  sea,  with  her  last 
breath  sent  us  this  blessing :  "  I  feel  with  more  pain 
than  most  Americans  do,  the  sorrow  of  your  transi- 
tion time  ;  but  I  do  feel  that  it  is  transition  ;  that  it 
is  crisis ;  that  you  will  come  out  of  the  fire  purified 
and  stainless,  having  had  the  angel  of  a  great  cause 
walking  with  you  in  the  furnace." 


THE  ALPS  OF  THE  IDEAL  AND  THE 
SWITZERLAND  OF  THE  SWISS. 


We  build  our  cities  on  the  lowlands,  where  we 
can  walk  on  a  common  level,  and  trade  along  the 
rivers,  and  across  the  seas,  and  work  easily  as  a  mass 
for  production  in  quantity.  But,  when  the  atom  of 
the  mass  would  learn  what  condensed  fire  it  is,  when 
politician,  trader,  artisan,  student  has  to  stand  alone, 
and  find  intrinsic  values,  then,  as  the  nation  in  its 
extremity  flees  to  its  Rock  Rimmon,  or  its  Tyrol,  so 
the  man  to  his  mountains ;  in  the  body  if  he  can,  at 
all  events  in  the  spirit. 

For  the  mountain  is  nature's  symbol  of  personal- 
ity ;  her  word  of  decision,  vigor,  outlook,  serenity, 
self-respect;  of  humility  also  and  awe, —  whatsoever 
reconstructs  the  disintegrating  moral  force  and  re- 
news spiritual  substance. 

Our  dreams  are  haunted  by  unseen  table-lands; 
some  vision  of  "  Delectable  Mountains  "  upholds  our 
nobler  trust.  They  are  history  ;  "  Beautiful  is  Zion," 
says  the  Hebrew.  Rome  also  rules  from  her  seven 
hills  ;  Athens  from  her  Acropolis ;  Memphis  from 
her  Pyramids,  —  mountains  that  are  the  steps  of  man 
to  the  vantage  of  his  ideal.  His  gods  sit  on  Hima- 
laya, Olympus,  Ararat,  Elburz,  nearest  the  stars. 
Around   Meru,  the  dome  of  Asia,  revolve  her  deities 


184  THE  ALPS  OF  THE  IDEAL. 

and  worlds.  On  Parnassus,  the  Muses  of  Greece 
circle  their  fair-haired  god  of  light.  Mountains  are 
prehistoric,  and  poetry  begins  the  world  at  tbem  with 
descending  tracks  of  patriarchs  and  long-lived  happy- 
men.  Zoroaster,  Moses,  Mahomet,  Christ,  legislate 
from  mountains  to  the  imagination  and  faith  of  races, 
who  have  turned  away  from  all  cities  of  the  plain 
to  lift  their  ideals  upon  these  natural  thrones,  and 
make  supernaturalism  itself  pay  tribute  to  a  grander 
truth.  And  our  civilization,  which  makes  highways 
for  the  people,  must  not  level  downwards  to  the  com- 
mon flat  of  blind  competition,  jealous  of  eminence, 
or  beastly  with  the  betting-match  and  the  prize-ring. 
Liberty  is  no  dead  level,  else  were  Peking,  with  all 
its  houses  of  one  height  and  all  its  pagodas  of  one 
fashion,  its  supreme  type.  For  the  lower  personal 
quality  must  recognize  the  higher ;  nature  will  bring 
us  also  to  the  mountain's  foot.  And,  when  our 
American  wave  shall  have  swept  on  to  the  lifted  crest 
of  the  continent  as  the  older  civilizations  gathered 
about  Ararat  and  Belur-Tagh,  and  our  scrambling 
conceit  is  forgotten  in  the  nobler  humanity  that  rail- 
road, and  telegraph,  and  migration,  and  revolution 
mean,  we  shall  doubtless  repeat  the  old  awe;  the  pa- 
triotic and  poetic  spells  will  gather  about  our  own 
Alpine  world. 

Now,  the  power  of  mountains  is  not  material  pow- 
er ;  not  as  mass  do  they  master  us.  They  are  but 
ripples,  the  loftiest  of  them  not  a  two  thousandth 
part  of  the  earth's  diameter,  mere  crumplings  of  her 
skin.  Geology  is  at  its  wit's  end  to  know  if  they  are 
not  due  to  mere  sinking  in  of  the  coohng  mass.  No 
longer  are  their  roots  set  in  fire  ;  and  we  know  no 
more  of  the  "central  heat "  than  we  do  of  the  theo- 


THE  ALPS  OF  THE  IDEAL.  185 

logical  burning  lake,  or  of  Dante's  circles  of  the  fiery- 
pit.  Their  volcanic  uplifts  are  but  as  bubbles  on  the 
sea.  Dhwalagiri  or  Kilimandjaro,  the  peaks  of  the 
Himalaya  and  Atlas,  that  rise  to  the  inaccessible 
limit  of  mountain  height,  pierce  scarce  a  tenth  of  the 
thin  air  envelope  of  the  globe.  Mont  Blanc  is  but  a 
pebble  in  this  air-ocean.  *'  Stay  the  Morning-Star  in 
his  steep  course  ?  ''  Why,  it  is  but  a  line  across  his 
path,  and  the  dawn  is  swift  to  drown  these  bits  of 
sand-bar  as  it  rises  to  flood  the  continents  and  seas. 

Not  their  mass,  then,  makes  mountains  significant, 
so  much  as  their  affinity  with  man's  ideals,  directing 
and  shaping  them  as  well  as  lifting  them  into  imag- 
ination and  faith.  For  his  civilizations  follow  their 
scoops,  like  the  winds  of  his  atmosphere,  the  tides  of 
his  shores.  Their  silent  Rhone  glacier,  spreading  out 
its  great  ice-fingers  among  the  clouds,  is  first  father 
of  Geneva,  of  Lyons,  of  Marseilles.  The  deltas  of 
Nile  and  Ganges,  Thames,  Seine,  Mississippi,  where 
history  centres,  where  the  generations  find  permanent 
foothold,  are  but  their  silted  sand.  Man  stands  on 
his  mountains  to  triangulate  the  globe,  to  gauge  and 
weigh  and  scale  the  invisible  forces,  in  which  he 
lives.  They  show  him  metal  and  star.  A  savage, 
he  takes  the  tops  of  the  hills  for  his  signal-fires.  A 
master  of  science,  he  lays  his  speaking  wires  along 
the  ocean  plateaus.  If  "  mountains  interposed  have 
made  enemies  of  nations,"  there  is,  nevertheless,  no 
such  provocative  as  they  are  to  the  work  that  brings 
men  together  and  makes  them  friends.  There  is 
nothing  more  suggestive  in  the  history  of  Europe 
than  the  transformation  of  the  petty  Swiss  Cantons 
from  fighting  clans  into  a  peaceful  and  patriotic 
Commonwealth  through  the  impulse  of  road-building 


186  THE  ALPS  OF  THE  IDEAL. 

and  the  yearning  for  society,  enforced  on  a  scattered 
peasantry  by  the  mountain  barriers  that  shut  them 
in.  Well  may  they  love  the  frowning  walls  they 
have  mastered,  and  call  them  by  the  pet  names  of 
their  domestic  and  hunting  life.  These  are  the 
mediators  of  Europe,  the  common  sanctuary,  true 
field  of  the  *'  Truce  of  God,"  which  diplomacy  and 
rapine  alike  must  recognize  ;  and  even  a  rude  Louis 
Napoleon  dared  not  violate  far  or  attempt  to  hold. 
A  nation  is  always  more  united  and  more  permanent 
for  its  mountain  basis,  though  it  is  not  apt  to  reach 
the  finer  education  which  this  basis  yields,  unless  it 
can  escape  at  will  to  the  open  plain,  and  know  the 
highlands  by  distance  and  in  relief.  The  higher 
mountains  must  appeal  to  the  sense  of  contrast  and 
the  freedom  of  contemplation.  But  when  these  are 
given,  he  who  can  lift  his  eyes  above  himself  re- 
ceives such  interpretation  of  life  and  the  world  as 
can  only  be  likened  to  new  creation  of  both.  Light 
is  not  light  till  it  shines  back  from  these  worn  faces, 
ploughed  and  scarred  up  to  their  inviolate  summits, 
in  hues  of  immortal  youth.  Stars  are  not  stars  till 
they  burn  large  and  lustrous  through  the  blackness  of 
the  upper  air,  or  islanded  in  seas  of  twilight  above 
dark  ridges  where  every  pine  stands  waiting  to  be 
clothed  in  a  new  body  of  light  from  their  inaccessible 
shores.  Even  clouds  are  more  than  clouds  when  they 
rest  on  the  lower  hills  and  by  hiding  their  summits 
make  the  least  of  them  a  mountain;  and  mist  is  more 
than  mist  when  it  sweeps  over  a  world  of  peaks  and 
passes,  effaces  them  in  an  instant,  and  leaves  you, 
who  just  stood  amidst  a  living  universe,  in  the  blank 
void  alone.  You  know  not  how  the  air  is  courage 
and  the  fire  of  will,  how  toil  may  cheer,  and  trouble 


THE  ALPS  OF  THE  IDEAL.  187 

pay  as  it  goes,  till  nature  meets  you  as  you  climb, 
with  the  aspiration  of  her  stone  stairways,  to  the  re- 
pose of  her  ledges  and  the  triumph  of  her  highest  out- 
looks. Their  gifts  are  pluck  and  perseverance,  the 
upward  look,  the  better  hope,  the  pick  of  vantage, 
the  quick  ear  and  eye  to  which  all  great  and  little 
things  are  instant  and  vital,  the  soul  watching  at  the 
gates  of  sense,  and  specially  this  prime  lesson  of  per- 
sonality, —  that  it  is  what  and  where  we  stand  that 
shapes  our  world.  How  Browning  has  worded  this 
plasticity  of  mountain  shape  to  our  point  of  view  ;  — 

**  Oh,  those  mountains,  their  infinite  movement ! 
Still  moving  with  you  — 
For,  ever  some  new  head  and  breast  of  them 
Thrusts  into  view." 

Whoso  has  learned  by  many-sided  thought  that  we 
see  but  what  we  are,  and  make  the  visions  we  see,  is 
strong. 

It  is  conventionality,  it  is  impertinence,  to  "  feel 
our  insignificance  up  there,"  as  the  phrase  is.  Rather 
we  are  self  no  more,  but  lose  our  limits  in  the  whole ; 
older  than  winds  or  rocks,  we,  like  the  laws  and  the 
spaces,  were  always  here.  As  our  poet  "  climbed  to 
the  top  of  Calvano,"  — 

"  And  God's  own  profound 
Was  above  me,  and  round  me  the  mountains, 

And  under,  the  sea. 
And  within  me,  my  heart  to  bear  witness 
What  was  and  shall  be." 

The  endless  fascination  of  mountains  is  in  this  : 
that  their  meaning  is  in  us;  and  not  in  our  common 
place,  but  in  those  elect  hours  when  the  mystery  of 
its  own  origin  and  path  and  purpose  touches  the 
soul. 


188  THE  ALPS   OF   THE  TOEAL. 

"  Who  knoweth,"  say  these  earth-horn  Titans  also, 
*'  how  our  buttressed  strength  was  piled,  or  how  our 
tender  outlines  were  carved  ? "  The  path  of  the 
wild  goat,  the  eagle's  track  to  her  nest,  the  cradle  of 
the  torrent,  who  hath  known  ;  or  how  came  they 
hanging  aloft  in  the  sky  ?  As  none  beheld  that  fine 
splinter  on  the  easternmost  crag  that  caught  the  first 
ray  of  morning,  so  who  can  tell  where  in  the  im- 
searchable  heights  of  his  nature  came  down  the  first 
glow  of  what  is  now  the  daylight  of  his  life  ?  Or  on 
what  secluded  dream  fell  the  first  ray  of  a  great  dawn 
in.  human  history  or  faith  ?  How  were  those  fathom- 
less chasms  scooped  that  part  the  cliffs  forever  above 
the  glacial  sea,  rivaling  the  mystery  of  those  spiritual 
gulfs  that  divide  good  from  evil,  right  from  wrong  ? 
What  is  the  mountain,  what  the  conscious  soul  ? 
We  walk  and  work  under  the  unanswered  problems 
of  both,  where  it  is  the  very  void  of  silence  that 
makes  us  full.  Can  any  rational  man  imagine  that 
science  explains  the  one  more  than  the  otlier  ?  How 
were  slowly  settling  layers  of  living  organisms  and 
dead  atoms  compressed  and  transformed  to  make  the 
solid  strength  that  towers  above  us,  we  may  learn, 
when  we  know  how  the  thoughts  have  fared  that  fell 
one  by  one  into  the  deeps  of  experience.  For  is  not 
memory  also  metamorphic,  since  not  one  mood  of  the 
past  can  ever  be  recalled,  unchanged  ?  Science  dis- 
pels the  pretty  dreams  of  mythology,  but  analysis 
never  solved  the  metallurgy  that  sets  life  to  burn- 
ing and  flashing  in  the  amethyst  and  diamond  of  the 
mine,  any  more  than  it  has  solved  the  feeling  that 
rises  unbidden  in  the  heart.  Who  shall  track  the 
mountain  experience,  the  dislocation  of  masses,  the 
idiosyncrasies  of  shape,  hard  to  explain  as  one's  own 


THE  ALPS  OF  THE  IDEAL.  189 

disjointed  fancies  and  dreams?  Picking  his  way 
among  them  one  cannot  predict  where  his  next  step 
shall  be  ;  every  fresh  foothold  gained  is  a  special 
wonder  ;  many  a  leap  a  pure  act  of  faith ;  many  a 
dizzy  path  where  only  one  can  go  at  a  time,  like 
the  Moslem's  Bridge  of  Judgment,  sharp  as  a  razor's 
edge.  Steep  bare  fronts,  whereon  should  be  written 
the  hieroglyphics  of  the  mountain  history,  will  often 
seem  blank  as  the  great  Egyptian  tablet  of  your 
memory^  into  which  your  whole  life  has  entered.  Yet 
it  is  all  there,  only  the  lines,  like  those  of  tempera- 
ment, tradition,  fate,  and  will,  are  too  minute ;  the 
crisp  curls  of  dry  lichen  that  will  not  be  detached  ; 
the  frost  seams  wrought  by  microscopic  levers,  all 
heaving  together,  foreordained  to  split  the  mass ;  the 
mystic  lines  of  cleavage,  diluvial  grooves,  ghostly  rec- 
ords of  a  world  of  rushing  currents,  eager  straining 
ambitions  forever  past ;  weather-stains,  rain-channels, 
polished  water  spaces,  the  fixed  ideas  and  routines  of 
the  mountain  mind.  The  Switzerland  of  nature  is 
the  mystery  of  man.  The  statistics  of  time  reach  the 
root  of  neither.  Yet  both,  serene  in  their  laws  beyond 
the  avalanche  and  the  storm,  in  a  patience  "  without 
haste,  but  without  rest,"  in  a  progress  which  is  ever 
old  and  ever  new,  beyond  man's  understanding  as 
they  are,  will  never  prove  beyond  his  love  and  trust. 
You  have  spoken  the  secret  of  this  human  attrac- 
tion to  mountains,  when  you  say  that  they  are  the 
great  physical  types  of  personalities  of  the  globe. 
There  they  stand,  clear-cut,  strong,  self-poised,  self- 
possessed,  radical,  upright ;  backbone,  rib,  and  muscle 
not  to  be  bent ;  not  reflecting  sky,  bird,  cloud,  like 
the  passive  lake,  but  transmuting  whatsoever  touches 
them  into  radiations  of  their  own  original  life ;  cloud 


190  THE  ALPS  OF  THE  IDEAL. 

compelling,  storm-ruling  Joves.  Each  is  himself  and 
none  other,  and  faces  the  elements  by  his  own  proper 
force.  I  once  saw  from  the  terrace  of  Bern  the  long 
line  of  Oberland  kings,  —  Jungfrau,  Eiger,  Monch, 
and  Wellhorn,  and  Wetterhorn,  and  Finsteraarhorn, 
—  on  their  great  white  thrones  along  the  horizon ;  each 
refusing  preeminence,  yet  maintaining  his  individual 
form  and  tone.  A  new  Olympus  seemed  to  reaffirm 
the  old  truth,  that  the  gods  are  divine  men.  So  far 
they  seemed  and  yet  so  near,  I  thought  of  Sterling's 
verse,  — 

"  Ever  their  phantoms  arise  before  us, 

Our  loftier  brothers,  but  one  in  blood ; 
By  bed  and  table  they  lord  it  o'er  us, 

With  looks  of  beauty  and  words  of  good." 

Cotopaxi  or  Dhwalagiri  is  a  personality  that  sums 
up  the  world ;  all  zones  from  equator  to  poles,  all 
products  in  orderly  ascent  on  its  sides ;  all  primal 
elements  and  powers  fused  in  its  grandeur  and  its 
peace. 

Nor  do  the  higher  mountains  lack  suggestion  of 
the  very  finest  types  of  personal  greatness.  For, 
while  the  lower  platforms  and  slopes  of  these  clothe 
themselves  in  manifold  products  of  native  culture 
and  growth,  and  then  higher  ones,  in  the  strength  of 
pine,  and  hardy  grace  of  spruce,  and  still  higher  up, 
harvests  of  wild  berries  and  pretty  grasses  greet  the 
guest  that  climbs  so  far,  and  even  then  come  pas- 
tures where  the  herds  can  glean  sweet  food,  as  if 
the  mountains  could  not  bear  to  cease  from  open 
bounty  and  use,  —  above  all  these  levels  are  spaces 
where  they  seem  to  trust  in  no  fruits  or  uses  of  their 
own,  but  just  in  lying  open  to  the  infinite  and  being 
clothed  only  in  its  light ;  as  if  to  he  was  of  itself  to 


THE   SWITZERLAND  OF   THE  SWISS.  191 

have  siglit  and  strength  and  eminent  domain.  And 
the  further  up  they  are,  the  more  they  seem  to  hide 
their  comparative  elevation,  as  Mont  Blanc's  de- 
pressed dome  looks  less  conspicuous  from  below  than 
the  needle  peaks  encircling  and  bending  towards  it. 
Coleridge  called  architecture  "  frozen  music."  Surely 
the  mountain  is  the  soul  in  hieroglyph  ;  and  Tenny- 
son has  interpreted  the  symbol :  — 

"  The  path  of  duty  is  the  way  to  glory  : 
He,  that  ever  following  her  commands, 
On  with  toil  of  heart  and  knees  and  hands 

Thro'  the  long  gorge  to  the  far  light  has  won 
His  path  upward,  and  prevail'd. 
Shall  find  the  toppling  crags  of  Duty  scaled, 
Are  close  upon  the  shining  table-lands, 

To  which  our  God  Himself  is  moon  and  sun." 

The  mountain  is  type  of  the  soul,  but  not  of  the 
God  of  the  soul.  Personality  is  not  infinite  but 
finite ;  I  cannot  give  even  that  greatest  of  concrete 
names  to  the  eternal  substance  of  the  universe,  the 
inscrutable  meaning  of  all  laws  and  forces,  the  life 
that  contains  all  and  is  all,  immanent  and  whole, 
while  personalities  come  and  go.  And  so  the  lof- 
tiest summit  above  the  sea  level  penetrates  but  a 
little  way  into  space,  and  parts  its  unity  only  to  lose 
itself  in  its  bosom,  and  repose  in  its  necessities  of 
order  and  peace. 

And  now  we  will  pass  from  these  Alps  of  the  Ideal 
to  the  Switzerland  of  the  Swiss.  It  may  seem  to  be 
a  far  descent.  But  the  eternal  realities  do  not  stand 
in  symbol  around  a  people  for  ages  and  leave  no 
vestige  in  their  consciousness.  And  first,  Switzer- 
land is  a  living  monument  of  the  superiority  of  moral 
over  material  forces,  of  the  conversion  of  hindrances 


102  THE   SWITZERLAND   OF   THE   SWISS. 

into  helps.  Everything  is  symbolic  of  this  mastery 
of  centrifugal  forces  by  constructive  and  unifying  law. 
I  cannot  this  evening  speak  of  the  wonderful  illustra- 
tions of  my  statement  iii  the  history  of  Swiss  liberty, 
political  and  religious.  I  wish  to  confine  myself  to 
the  direct  relations  of  this  people  to  the  presence  of 
their  Alpine  world. 

They  number  twenty-two  small  cantons,  separated 
by  mountains  that  pierce  the  clouds,  sinking  into 
valleys  of  corresponding  depth,  some  of  which  behold 
but  a  strip  of  the  starry  sky.  They  have  made  these 
barriers  yield  them  the  noblest  highways  in  the 
world,  types  of  some  grand  idea  found  in  all  races 
and  religions,  binding  the  ages,  and  testifying  of  an 
irresistible  brotherhood. 

From  the  savage  desolation  of  the  glaciers  to  the 
green  and  wealthy  plains,  from  the  homes  of  the  keen- 
eyed  mountain  guides  to  the  land  and  lake  of  Tell, 
sweeps  down  in  stately  solidity  and  grace  the  mag- 
nificent St.  Gothard  road.  Down  the  solemn  gorge 
it  sweeps,  at  intervals  bridging  the  inevitable  torrent 
that  attends  it  like  a  fate,  as  if  it  laid  a  human  hand 
on  the  rage  and  roar  of  a  Caliban,  infuriate  at  the 
bold  intrusion  of  man ;  between  bare  precipices, 
splintered,  shelled,  shattered,  carved,  every  square 
yard  an  infinite  intricacy  of  rock  structure  and  a 
study  in  the  mysteries  of  color  and  form.  And 
where  these  walls  break  away,  the  eye  is  led  off  up 
amphitheatres  of  mountains,  seas  of  pine  and  gla- 
cier ;  and  where  they  gather  over  your  head,  yet  far 
in  the  distance  behind  or  before,  shapely  domes  and 
peaks  ascend,  blue  beyond  blue,  in  infinitely  delicate 
gradation,  till  they  pass  into  transparent  sky.  The 
looped  curves  of  the  descent  have  an  astronomical 


THE   SWITZERLAND    OF   THE   SWISS.  193 

perfection.  This  more  than  Roman  structure  is  the 
tribute  of  two  poor  Catholic  cantons  to  the  spirit  of 
strength,  beauty,  and  use ;  and  their  busy  hammers 
keep  it  in  repair.  Thus  have  the  Swiss  everywhere 
treated  the  prodigious  obstacles  to  communication, 
in  a  land  which  resembles  a  petrified  sea  of  storm- 
tost  waves.  Its  earliest  tribes  were  isolated  clans,  the 
wind-borne  waifs  of  many  races.  The  awful  preci- 
pice, the  mysterious,  glacier,  the  whelming  avalanche, 
the  lonely  barren  pass,  the  treacherous  ice-slope,  the 
Fohn-wind  from  Africa  melting  accumulated  snows 
in  a  night  to  engulf  hut  and  hamlet,  combined  all 
the  destructive  forces  of  nature  to  quell  the  souls  of 
these  rude  men.  Here  were  gathered,  as  time  went 
on,  as  many  nationalities  as  make  up  our  American 
race,  yet  with  no  absorbing  quality  in  either,  anal- 
ogous to  the  Anglo-Saxon  with  us,  to  overcome  the 
isolations  of  nature.  In  the  Grisons  are  no  less  than 
thirty  distinct  valleys,  parted  by  enormous  ridges,  in 
four  of  which  Italian  is  spoken,  in  ten,  German,  in 
the  rest  Romanic,  a  mixed  speech  with  half  a  dozen 
dialects.  I  observed  in  the  valley  of  Charaounix 
alone,  the  Celtic,  Italian,  and  Teutonic  varieties  of 
face  ;  and  in  general,  the  prevalence  of  two  distinct 
physiological  types,  determined,  as  I  believe,  by  the 
differing  capacity  of  races  for  meeting  the  severi- 
ties of  the  Alpine  climate.  One  of  these  has  a  rud- 
dy, lively  countenance,  a  clear  and  quiet  expression, 
deepening  into  thoughtfulness  with  age  ;  the  other 
a  stunted  form,  loose-jointed  and  weak-limbed,  a  low 
forehead,  broad  flat  features,  and  an  expression  tend- 
ing towards,  and  not  unfrequently  reaching,  fatuity, 
and  this  not  in  the  districts  alone  where  cretinism 
prevails.  The  people  of  the  upper  regions  are,  of 
13 


1 


194      THE  SWITZERLAND  OF  THE  SWISS. 

course,  greatly  overworked.  Probably  the  mere  climb- 
ing tells  heavily  on  the  nervous  energy.  They  look 
Liliputian,  as  if  snubbed  by  the  mountains,  which 
have  bred  dwarfs  for  the  sake  of  contrast,  and 

"  Taunted  the  lofty  land 
With  little  men." 

These  toilers  of  the  heights  get  lean  and  angular, 
and  the  women  grow  old  prematurely ;  anxiety 
wrinkles  the  face  of  youth,  and  while  the  head 
lengthens  out,  the  body  fails  of  due  expansion.  It 
is  a  question  of  heel-work.  I  suspect  that  too  steep 
mountains,  and  too  easy  levels  (Switzerland  and 
Holland)  breed  short  statures;  while  hill  ranges 
kindly  pull  at  bone  and  fibre  and  lengthen  the  limbs. 
In  the  lowlands  of  Switzerland  the  depressing  influ- 
ences give  way,  and  thence  come  further  contrasts  as 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  national  fusion.  Consider 
what  large  numbers  of  the  Swiss  live  in  hamlets  or 
secluded  cots,  absolutely  cut  off  from  society  during 
most  of  the  year.  No  access  to  mankind  but  by  some 
dizzy  path  skirting  precipices  and  winding  down 
their  sides,  over  debris  and  torrent  for  miles  and 
miles.  Above  the  Mer  de  Glace,  solitary  keepers 
watch  their  herds  all  summer  long,  without  seeing  a 
human  face.  It  is  said  they  knit  for  pastime.  But 
what  garments  do  the  impersonal  hours,  the  storms, 
and  torrents,  and  grazing  herds  knit  around  them. 
What  does  Nature  make  of  these  molecules  of  con- 
sciousness, to  whom  she  vouchsafes  only  mountain 
masses  of  utter  loneliness,  and  supreme  power  ? 
Eyes  are  but  lenses,  not  sight ;  and  these  eyes,  we 
must  think,  are  so  opaque  as  to  kindly  temper  the 
infinite  splendors  and  terrors  to  simple  souls.  From 
lower  heights  you  may  discern  here  and  there  a  peas- 


THE  SWITZERLAND   OF  THE   SWISS.  195 

ant  moving  about  his  homestead  pasture  in  the  sky  ; 
a  butterfly  could  scale  the  snow-cliffs  above  him  bet- 
ter than  he,  and  seems  quite  as  significant  a  creature 
as  he,  beside  them.  Yet  there  he  lives,  year  in  and 
out,  and  guards  his  household  treasures,  and  rears 
them  in  the  pride  of  old  traditions  to  know  them- 
selves free  Switzers  and  trust  Nature  as  their  next 
friend ;  as, 

"  Down  Alpine  heights  the  silvery  streamlets  flow  ; 
And  the  bold  chamois  go  ; 
On  giddy  crags  they  stand, 
And  drink  from  God's  own  hand." 

As  for  you,  there  was  need  of  that  human  insect 
moving  in  your  far  prospect,  to  make  the  solitude 
itself  palpable.  How  many  times  the  mere  tinkle  of 
a  herd-bell,  a  shepherd's  voice  on  the  height,  or  a 
hunter's  gun-crack  in  the  pine-seas  below,  has  broken 
the  terrible  dream-like  spell  of  mountain  universe 
and  made  it  an  instant  reality !  I  suppose  that  the 
lonely  speck  of  a  herdsman  up  there  is  not  left  to 
be  visited  only,  like  Mont  Blanc,  "  by  hosts  of  stars," 
but  has  his  world -reviving  vision  of  other  human 
specks  over  the  vast  expanses  he  knows  and  tracks 
with  his  eye  so  well ;  and  the  good  they  do  his  heart 
and  hope  may  put  to  shame  our  use  of  telegraph 
and  steam-power. 

One  sees  how  familiarity  must  help  the  isolated 
Switzers  to  disregard  and  so  conquer  the  antagonisms 
around  them,  just  as  the  roar  of  a  thousand  torrents, 
blent  into  one  deep  under-roll,  an  audible  eternity, 
becomes  so  intimate  to  the  hearing  in  the  Alps,  that 
you  never  think  of  its  mystery,  nor  ask  its  explana- 
tion. And  one  might  almost  say  that  it  is  only  when 
herd-bell,  or  horn,  or  bleat  of  sheep  floods  this  low 


196  THE   SWITZERLAND    OF   THE   SWISS. 

perpetual  voice  of  nature  with  a  human  gladness  and 
peace  that  you  are  aroused  to  take  note  of  its  all-per- 
vading presence.  So  the  peasant,  keeping  his  goat 
track  over  the  high  Alps,  does  not  hold  his  breath 
when  the  avalanches  thunder  down  beside  him,  nor 
shrink  from  dizziest  cliffs  when  need  is  to  cross  them, 
and  this  just  because  they  front  and  frown  on  him. 
every  day  he  has  lived. 

But  the  brief  summer  smiles  on  him  all  the  more 
sweetly  for  the  shortness  of  her  stay,  and  the  length- 
ened winter  brings  at  last  all  the  swifter  and  hap- 
pier surprise.  These  green  alps  (for  the  alp  is  the 
high  meadow,  not  the  mountain  face),  under  bare 
crag  and  snow-field,  are  radiant  in  a  twinkling  with 
pansies,  gentians,  purple  heather,  potentillas,  blue- 
bells, buttercups,  daisies,  thyme,  and  the  blushing 
rhododendron,  or  Alpine  rose,  whose  color  is  distilled 
from  the  sunset  on  rudd}^  peaks  and  domes  of  snow. 
Even  the  rock-debris  flowers  out,  and  the  thin-clad 
knoll ;  and  every  flower  nestles  close  to  the  ground, 
with  scarce  a  leaf  or  stem.  For  the  suddenness  and 
swiftness  of  the  season  and  the  solar  reflections  drive 
the  plant  straight  to  its  bloom,  and  all  its  life  goes 
to  color  and  size  of  flower.  The  dandelion  turns  to 
glowing  orange,  the  clover  to  deep  crimson,  the  gen- 
tian takes  in  tenser  blue  ;  only  harebell  and  pansy  are 
pale,  like  the  crystalline  of  the  snows.  And  up,  up 
over  these  flowery  alps,  by  paths  that  skirt  the  eter- 
nal toil  of  the  elements  to  build  and  to  destroy,  over 
the  sea  of  mountains  rent  and  ploughed,  upheaved  as 
in  ecstasy  out  of  hopeless  depression  in  the  gloom,  over 
great  brown  ridges  of  the  dust  of  ten  thousand  years, 
beneath  mysterious  reaches  of  an  unexplored  world 
of  light  —  up  the  worn  and  winding  tracks  of  daily 


THE  SWITZERLAND  OF  THE  SWISS.       197 

need,  go  simple  folk,  driving  their  white  trains  to 
high  pastures,  safe  and  sure  as  the  wild  geese  fly 
northward  to  meet  the  spring ;  and  their  cheery 
"  Ranz  des  Vaches  "  echoes  back  from  the  stately 
brotlierhood  of  watching  peaks,  —  watching  day  and 
night ;  now  hid,  now  revealed ;  now  far  off  in  the 
clearness,  now  close  in  the  world-shadow;  now  in  col- 
orless, inaccessible  reserve,  now  in  the  inexpressible 
tenderness  of  that  glow  which  only  Alpine  snows  can 
take  from  parting  day.  Does  it  not  sound  strange  to 
yourself  when  you  say  that  the  yodling  boy  or  girl 
up  there  sees  nothing  of  all  this  open  book  of  the 
mystery  of  life?  Can  you  think  it?  Life  is  his 
also,  and  death  will  be  his.  If  he  sees  not  all  this 
that  you  see,  at  least  he  is  in  and  of  it ;  it  has  the 
making  of  him.     From  the  hills  also  cometh  his  help. 

In  these  remote  hamlets  life  is  under  primitive  con- 
ditions with  little  visible  resource;  it  hangs  with 
cramp-iron  from  the  cliffs  with  one  hand,  while  ply- 
ing the  sickle  on  scanty  blades  with  the  other;  it 
bends  like  the  pack-horse  under  constant  burdens,  as 
the  weary  head  and  feet  of  man  or  woman  climb  the 
unchanging  ways  ;  taking  its  religious  tone  doubtless 
more  from  the  rigors  and  perils  of  the  surrounding 
than  from  its  beauty  or  sublimity ;  and  so  writing 
out,  as  men  do,  on  many  a  stretch  of  desolation  the 
old  story  of  human  wickedness  and  fall. 

From  the  hamlet  of  Miirren,  five  thousand  feet 
above  the  sea,  one  looks  across  the  deep  gorge  of 
Lauterbriinnen  up  the  Roththal  snows  into  loftiest 
ridges  of  the  Jungfrau.  This  arctic  world,  which  the 
chamois  scarce  explores,  was  once,  so  runs  the  legend, 
a  green  and  smiling  alp,  and  then  blasted  forever  for 
the  sin  of  its  possessors.     Rocks  projecting  from  the 


198  THE   SWITZERLAND   OF  THE   SWISS. 

snow,  in  shape  of  uncouth  beasts  and  men,  are  spell- 
bound cmninals,  or  demons  shut  for  a  season  in  stone. 
As  the  Hebrews  heard  the  whispers  of  devils  in  the 
desert,  so  many  a  Swiss  peasant  takes  the  mysterious 
voices  of  the  mountain  for  the  moans  of  tormented 
souls.  These  legends  haunt  many  other  icy  recesses 
of  the  mountains  also.  Such  pranks  all  vast  solitudes 
will  play  with  the  human  conscience  and  give  tradi- 
tions of  a  Fall  and  a  Judgment.  But  the  legend  of 
paradisaic  verdure  having  preceded  a  penal  desolation 
on  the  Alps  has  doubtless  other  causes.  Nothing  is 
more  natural  than  that  the  utter  absence  of  verdure 
in  vast  mountain  tracts  should  suggest  its  very  oppo- 
site by  the  law  of  contrasts.  It  is  probably  con- 
nected, also,  with  actual  physical  changes.  The 
secular  advance  and  recession  of  the  glaciers  imply 
great  climatic  changes  in  these  regions.  The  fertile 
valley  before  us  was  really  once  a  polar  wilderness, 
and  the  lofty  slope  now  bristling  with  pinnacles  of 
ice  and  yawning  with  crevasses  was  once  covered 
with  pines  or  flowering  sward.  Unwasted  as  the  gla- 
cier seems,  it  is  alive  with  inner  movements  ;  and  far 
within  its  hollow  sound  of  issuing  or  falling  waters, 
and  the  strange  gurgle  and  splash  of  rock  and  ice,  the 
primal  reservoirs  are  forever  filling  drop  by  drop.  As 
you  look  up  from  the  foot  of  a  glacier,  its  immense 
forehead  or  snout  seems  plunging  through  a  rocky 
mass,  tearing  and  heaving  it  upon  either  side,  though 
this  is  not  the  fact.  It  seems  alive  or  driven  on  by 
some  living  force,  resembling  a  sea-monster's  head,  a 
mighty  wedge,  an  upturned  ship's  prow.  Its  highest 
layers  split  away,  opening  a  vaulted  cavern,  w^hence 
rushes  the  newborn  Arve,  or  Rhone,  or  Reuss.  An 
azure  gleam  plays  in  the  crevasses ;  little  rills  course 


THE   SWITZERLAND  OF   THE   S\VISS.  199 

down  the  sides  scooping  their  way.  Far  aboye  you 
hangs  the  threatening  ice-wall  waiting  to  burst 
and  fall,  and  so  recover  lost  ground  for  the  once 
magnificent  torrent,  now  receding  for  centuries. 
Little  time  would  be  needed  to  convert  the  valley 
into  a  polar  sea,  but  for  the  swift  melting  and  evapo- 
ration that  is  going  on.  Mont  Blanc  would  rise  four 
liundred  feet  in  a  century,  by  the  mere  heaping  of 
the  annual  snows,  but  for  these  tremendous  arteries 
of  pounded  and  packed,  but  fluent,  ice.  Add  to  all 
these  signs  of  living  power  the  scarce  perceptible 
creep  and  lapse  of  the  ice  river,  noted  but  at  inter- 
vals, like  the  ebb  and  flow  of  human  times,  the  boom 
and  crash  of  falling  rocks  upon  the  surface,  the  slow- 
rising  moraine-heap  at  its  side,  the  dust  of  crumbled 
mountains  pushed  before  it  to  the  plain,  the  eter- 
nal resources  from  which  it  is  fed,  —  and  you  will 
see  how  much  there  is  in  a  glacier  to  impress  the 
lonely  generations  with  a  sense  of  continuous  forces 
at  never-failing  and  resistless  endeavor,  and  how  this 
sense  would  be  reflected  in  their  traditional  instincts 
and  habits,  the  real  basis  of  a  people's  character. 

The}^  know  that  the  ice-stream  is  the  architect  of 
their  whole  mountain  world,  the  scooper  of  the  gulfs, 
the  builder  of  the  barriers ;  and  though  it  presses  too 
close  and  familiar  to  leave  the  imagination  free,  its 
ceaseless  presence  is  surely  the  father  of  much  of  that 
patient,  persistent  striving  which  has  enabled  the 
social  instincts  of  the  Swiss  to  become  conquerors  of 
gulf  and  barrier  alike.  It  helps  this  victory  of  theirs 
even  more  directl}^,  fertilizing  the  valleys  and  reliev- 
ing the  accumulated  snow  mass  on  the  heights.  The 
glaciers  are  highways  of  geographical  connection  for 
the  elements,  though  not  for  man,  and  by  their  vast 


200       THE  SWITZERLAND  OF  THE  SWISS. 

related  systems  suggest  unity  on  the  grandest  scale. 
Three  feeders  flow  together  from  different  sides  into 
the  central  stream  of  the  Mer  de  Glace.  From  that 
scarcely  accessible  plateau  of  the  Bernese  Oberland, 
upholding  all  its  mighty  peaks  and  facing  the  four 
quarters  of  the  heavens,  descend  nine  great  glaciers, 
by  whatever  paths  they  can  find  a  passage,  to  the 
deep  valleys  of  Grindelwald,  Rosenlaui,  Hasli,  and 
the  Rhone,  —  furcating  from  the  one  vast  chamber 
above  the  clouds,  where  their  lines  of  separation 
cease.  It  is  a  majestic  symbol  of  unity  lifted  in  the 
heart  of  Switzerland,  though  its  altar-rim  overflows 
not  with  fire,  but  in  streams  of  ice  that  melt  into 
beauty  where  they  fall.  And  now  comes  science, 
to  trace  the  ancient  lines  of  glacial  motion  east  and 
west,  from  mountain  range  to  range,  and  make  the 
boulders  on  the  flanks  of  Jura  report  their  far-off 
homes  in  the  central  Alps.  What  thrills  of  sympa- 
thetic feeling  must  have  flashed  through  all  the  can- 
tons when  it  was  made  known  that  the  prediction 
based  upon  calculations  of  the  rate  of  glacial  motion, 
—  that  after  a  stated  number  of  years,  the  remains  of 
a  party  who  had  been  lost  in  the  upper  crevasses  of 
the  Mer  de  Glace  would  be  found  at  its  foot,  —  had 
proved  true  !  Or  when  Saussure  and  Forbes  and 
Rendu  and  Agassiz  and  Tyndall,  one  after  another, 
revealed  the  beautiful  laws  that  drew  the  regular 
curves  of  movement  across  the  wildest  wrinkles  of 
the  glacier's  face,  and  pulled  the  plunging  crevasses 
into  orderly  lines  ;  and  arranged  the  bounds  of  drift 
like  the  leaves  of  a  scroll,  and  spread  out  the  petals 
of  that  great  rose  of  ice  at  the  cradle  of  the  Rhone  ; 
and  tumbled  the  neve^  new-frozen  from  a  hundred 
heights,  over  ridges  of  rock  in  broken  fragments,  to 


THE   SWITZERLAND    OF   THE   SWISS.  201 

be  shaped  by  the  sun  into  pinnacles  and  towers  and 
blades  of  light ;  and  made  the  melting  surface  a 
honeycomb  of  pretty  cells,  and  gave  a  tender  blue 
to  the  cold  caves  within  the  mass,  and  the  hues  of 
Tyrian  purple  to  the  clouds  above  it,  as  one  may  see 
of  a  summer  day,  if  he  lies  upon  the  ground  and 
looks  at  them  across  the  tremulous  exhalations  of  its 
upturned  sea  !  What  endless  mission  it  has  !  As 
the  myth  of  superstition  looked  backward  to  isolation, 
so  the  law  of  science  points  forward  to  even  deeper 
and  richer  unity  of  thought  and  heart ! 

But  to  return  to  the  hard  conditions  of  the  se- 
cluded hamlets  of  which  I  spoke.  Some  are  many 
centuries  old,  and  suffer  little  change  in  the  lapse  of 
ages.  Some  are  mere  groups  of  log-huts,  their  roofs 
held  down  by  stones,  with  footpaths  straggling  from 
house  to  house  ;  rudely  furnished,  the  sum  of  their 
literature  and  art,  a  Bible  abstract,  a  reading  book, 
and  a  few  dauby  prints.  Even  here,  you  will  proba- 
bly find  a  school.  But  in  many  of  the  better  sort, 
especially  where  a  tidy  inn  stands  waiting  for  the 
traveler,  you  will  find  that  taste  for  delicate  carving 
by  hand  which  the  Swiss  seem  to  have  caught  from 
glacier,  waterfall,  frost,  and  storm,  —  a  national  ge- 
nius for  fine  art,  transmitted  through  centuries,  and 
compressed  by  natural  conditions  within  narrow  and 
domestic  limits.  Amidst  the  roar  of  waterfalls  and 
under  the  beetling  mountains,  deft  fingers  beside  cot- 
tage doors  are  cutting  out  of  bits  of  wood  their  dainty 
chamois,  scarce  larger  than  your  thumb-nail.  The 
isolated  life  I  have  described  has  been  common  in  all 
periods  of  Swiss  history,  and  in  earliest  times  was 
almost  universal ;  and  it  took  hundreds  of  years  after 
the  settlement  by  Germanic  tribes,  to  say  nothing  of 


202  THE   SWITZERLAND    OF   THE   SWISS. 

the  earlier  colonization  by  the  Romans,  for  even  the 
conception  of  national  unity  to  be  formed  among  the 
scattered  tribes.  Another  obstacle  to  unity  was  the 
warlike  character  of  the  early  communities,  fostered 
by  an  environment  more  suited,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
make  the  endurance  and  courage  of  a  soldier  than 
the  free  insight  of  a  seer  or  poet.  The  Swiss  have 
therefore  been  a  contentious  people  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end.  All  the  nationalities  of  the  con- 
tinent have  been  continually  dashing  against  each 
other  in  these  narrow  highlands,  just  as  the  conti- 
nent itself  seems  pressed  inward  by  some  centripetal 
force,  which  upheaved  it  into  this  stormy  sea.  Ev- 
ery canton  was  a  kind  of  Sparta,  and  the  warfare  of 
petty  antagonisms  that  went  on  for  centuries  prom- 
ised anything  but  the  unity  and  freedom  now  attain- 
ed. I  know  of  nothing  resembling  them  but  the  ri- 
valries and  conflicts  of  the  Greek  states,  which  ended 
in  a  very  different  way.  I  shall  not  enter  on  the 
wonderful  story  of  their  achievement  to-night,  but 
will  only  say  in  passing  that  a  staunch  individualism 
persistently  bore  witness  to  the  isolating  power  of 
the  mountain  walls,  while  it  kept  awake  and  vigilant 
the  spirit  of  liberty,  and  is  now  justified  by  its  fruits. 
Observe  that  as  the  civil  feuds  wore  out,  the  old 
habits  ran  down  into  a  taste  for  foreign  military  ser- 
vice, which  I  ascribe  to  no  special  mercenariness  in 
the  Swiss  character,  as  is  often  assumed,  but  to  the 
ancient  military  spirit  demanding  fresh  fields  abroad, 
especially  in  the  poorer  Catholic  cantons  ;  and  to  the 
mountaineer's  natural  longing  to  escape  into  the  open 
world.  Their  passion  for  emigration  is  not  more 
characteristic  than  their  industry  and  persistence;  and 
the  stern  training  of  centuries  must  have  brought 


THE   SWITZERLAND   OF   THE   SWISS.  203 

from  the  Alps  their  tenderness  as  well  as  their  vigor, 
for  the  Swiss  heimiveh  to  have  become  a  proverb 
through  the  world.  The  martial  energy  of  the 
Catholic  cantons  was  always  in  demand  among 
Catholic  powers.  The  gift  of  whole  provinces  was 
strong  temptation  to  a  poor  and  hardy  race.  In 
those  wars  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when  there  was  al- 
ways as  much  intrigue  and  as  little  principle  on  the 
one  side  as  on  the  other,  and  the  foreign  hireling  did 
the  fighting  in  place  of  the  citizen,  it  is  after  all  the 
special  courage  of  the  Swiss  adventurer,  rather  than 
his  indifference  as  to  which  side  he  fought  for,  that 
attracts  our  notice.  All  the  inbred  valor  and  passion 
has  now  found  field  in  that  vigilance  which  is  the 
eternal  price  of  liberty  ;  and  every  able-bodied  citizen 
of  the  little  republic  is  a  drilled  and  watchful  min- 
uteman.  Bound  into  the  monotonous  struggle  with 
permanent  physical  conditions,  by  which  they  have 
slowly  achieved  their  unity  and  freedom,  the  Swiss 
have  great  obstinacy  and  tenacity  combined  with  un- 
equaled  simplicity  of  thought  and  taste.  They  do 
not  forsake  ancestral  laws  and  customs  ;  they  nei- 
ther invent  new  relations  nor  diversify  the  old.  For 
seven  centuries  they  have  admitted  only  three  pro- 
found changes  in  their  legislation.  One  of  their 
writers  has  said  that  "  in  the  most  radical  Swiss 
there  is  a  conservative."  In  some  remote  cantons 
there  are  still  no  printed  statutes,  and  the  simplest 
form  of  legislation  survives.  The  Swiss  constitution, 
where  the  Federal  Assembly  elect  all  functionaries, 
is  the  simplest  kind  of  democracy.  Of  a  grave  turn, 
avoiding  passionate  excitement,  they  are  yet  hy  a  very 
natural  reaction  social,  inquisitive,  often  garrulous, 
fond  of  fetes  and  rustic  games.     The  gravity  easily 


204       THE  SWITZERLAND  OF  THE  SWISS. 

passes  into  disputatiousness  and  satire,  as  of  people 
whom  hard  pull-backs  have  made  skeptical  or  some- 
what jealous  or  even  cynical.  They  find  relief  in 
humor,  and  in  a  quaint  grotesqueness  that  is  proba- 
bly the  irony  of  reduced  expectations  ;  have  a  turn 
for  banter  and  a  shrewd  practical  wit ;  a  busy  fancy 
with  dipt  wings,  as  if  one  should  say  "  it  is  a  fool's 
part  to  climb  Mont  Blanc,  when  he  can  go  round  it." 
They  carve  this  prudential  wisdom  as  a  prophylactic 
on  the  beams  of  their  houses,  leaving  God  to  put  dash 
into  his  avalanche  and  torrent,  and  disdain  of  limits 
into  the  cornice  of  the  crag.  Here  are  a  few  of  their 
oracles  of  domestic  architecture  which  I  copied,  as  I 
went  by :  — 

"  Whoso  walks  upon  the  street. 
Many  slurs  is  sure  to  meet." 

"  A  pretty  thing  it  is  to  build  a  house, 
But,  alas  1  I  did  n't  count  the  cost." 

"  This  house  to  God's  hand  is  resigned  ; 
'T  is  new  in  front,  but  old  behind." 

"  The  master's  gold  gave  out,  or  you 
Would  see  a  mansion  wholly  new." 

"  Men  are  always  mourning 

That  the  times  are  growing  worse ; 

"  If  men  would  but  live  better  lives, 
The  times  would  change  their  course." 

"  If  only  envy  and  malice  would  but  burn, 
Fuel  would  not  be  half  so  dear." 

*'  If  there  be  any  one  who  can  do  right  by  all, 

With  all  respect  I  pray  he  teach  me  how  't  is  done.*' 

Or  take  these  samples  from  their  proverbs  of  thrift 
and  common  sense  :  — • 


THE   SWITZERLAND   OF   THE   SWISS.  203 

"  He  who  hunts  with  a  cat  must  bring  home  rats." 

"  No  bird  flies  so  high,  but  he  must  come  back  to  the 

ground." 
"  Bitter  mouth  can't  speak  sweet.'* 
"  Devil's  meal  turns  to  sand." 
"  Talk  to  the  fool,  but  trust  the  wise." 
"  Lord  save  us  from  a  pleasant  February." 
"  Snowball  and  scandal  grow  by  rolling." 
"  Homespun  and  homemade  for  the  farmer's  best." 
"  One  God  and  one  coat." 
"  Mist  and  vapor  are  great  men's  favors." 
"  A  word  is  a  man." 
"  Priest's  sack  has  no  bottom." 
"  Lies  have  short  legs ; "  and  so  forth. 

One  is  closely  reminded  of  Reynard  the  Fox,  and 
the  old  popular  satires  in  which  the  reformation  of 
Middle  Age  oppressions  in  Church  and  State  began. 
It  is  pleasant  thus  to  note  that  the  first  lessons  from 
the  mountains  were  slow,  sure  germs  of  liberty  and 
progress,  planked  in  solid  understanding  of  man  and 
his  honest  hold  on  hard  conditions  of  success. 

Time  has  proved  it  to  have  been  no  taunt,  when 
the  Alps  said  to  him,  "  Foothold  first,  my  brave  boy, 
not  wings."  The  grotesque  skeptical  humor  I  spoke 
of,  which  reminds  us  of  the  contortions  of  a  prisoner 
wrestling  with  his  bonds,  or  of  the  half-formed  lion 
in  Milton's  Creation  Scene,  —  *' pawing  to  get  free 
his  hinder  parts,"  is  conspicuous  in  Swiss  art.  In 
Bern  a  knock-kneed,  woe-begone  wooden  giant  flour- 
ishes a  monstrous  sword  on  a  tower  and  is  called 
"  Goliath  of  Gath." 

Every  one  has  heard  of  the  inevitable  Bears  of 
Bern  ;  great  bears  and  little  bears,  ogre  bears  carved 
on  fountains,  clad  in  armor,  sentinels  at  the  gates 
and  on  the  squares,  burlesques  of   humanity  in  all 


206  THE   SWITZERLAND   OF   THE   SWISS. 

kinds  ;  the  live  public  bears  kept  in  a  court-yard  and 
castle ;  the  puppet  bears  running  out  and  in  the  old 
clock  tower,  when  the  harlequin  strikes  the  hammer, 
and  the  cock  flaps  his  wings  and  squeaks,  and  the 
old  iron  knight  beats  the  heavy  bell  far  up  aloft. 
What  a  good-natured  travesty  of  medieval  church 
and  state  that  was  once,  and  what  a  satire  of  human 
works  and  ways  it  is  now^  and  so  fascinating  the  gap- 
ing crowd  as  much  as  it  did  centuries  ago  !  Bern  is 
not  alone  among  Swiss  cities  in  its  apologue  and  epos 
of  the  animal  world.  As  the  herds  go  gladly  to  the 
high  pastures  in  the  spring,  so  the  wild  beasts  of  the 
mountains  have  come  down  into  the  streets  to  sit  as 
models,  and  teach  art.  These  qualities  combine  with 
climatic  influences  to  give  great  picturesqueness  to 
the  architecture  and  life.  A  Swiss  farm-house  seems 
to  be  evolved  out  of  the  rugged  pine  and  the  rock- 
strewn,  carved,  and  splintered  crag,  and  the  village  is 
a  huddle  of  mountain  utilities  and  ingenuities.  The 
cities  are  quaint  enough.  The  houses  of  Bern  rest 
upon  heavy  stone  arches,  forming  a  covered  arcade 
on  both  sides  of  the  streets.  The  intervals  between 
the  piers  are  filled  with  wares  of  all  kinds,  which 
often  overflow  these  too  narrow  limits.  The  popula- 
tion swarms  along  these  sheltered  walks,  on  which 
obscure  doorways  open,  disclosing  stairways  and 
caves  dimmer  still.  As  you  look  down  the  streets, 
the  line  of  massive  piers  looks  cold  and  hard.  But 
the  long  windows  above,  of  ever- varying  style  of  arch 
and  jamb;  the  pretty  openwork  balustrades,  and  their 
red  cushions  and  gay  curtains  and  bright  flowers;  the 
innumerable  dormer  windows  of  all  sizes  and  in  all 
positions;  the  quaint  chimneys  bristling  in  hosts  over 
all  the  roofs  like  a  maze  of  impish  forms,  dancing  on 


THE   SWITZERLAND   OF   THE   SWISS.  207 

the  housetops ;  the  overhanging  eaves,  oddly  orna- 
mented and  thrusting  down  straggling  spouts  and 
water-tubes  everywhere ;  the  grotesque  ever-flowing 
fountains  with  their  stone  bears,  lions,  knights,  har- 
lequins, ogres,  and  their  great  round  basins  brim- 
ming with  bright  waters ;  the  parti-colored  caps  and 
kirtles  of  the  women  who  frequent  them,  with  buckets 
dripping,  and  the  great  currents  that  run  down  the 
middle  of  the  pavements,  —  all  throw  a  charming 
play  of  light  and  life  about  the  brown  sandstone  walls 
that  imprison  a  clean  and  busy  population.  Outside, 
along  the  river,  terraced  gardens  descend  the  bluff  to 
the  rushing  Aar,  overlooked  by  a  labyrinth  of  quaint 
architecture,  which  has  grown  up  in  bits  and  piece- 
meal, to  suit  the  changing  moods  or  convenience  of 
generations,  and  so  has  resulted  in  a  thousand  unde- 
signed beauties.  The  closeness  and  the  picturesque- 
ness,  the  dark  and  the  light,  are  alike  strange  to  the 
American,  and  he  learns  what  perhaps  he  needs  to 
know,  that  republican  liberty  can  strike  its  roots  into 
the  past  as  well  as  flourish  its  eager  boughs  in  the 
open  air  of  the  present.  The  social  and  domestic 
virtues  are  fostered  by  the  very  insecurity  and  help- 
lessness of  individuals  amidst  the  gigantic  forces  of 
nature.  The  serious  meaning  of  marriage  and  par- 
entage and  friendship  and  mutual  dependence  is  felt 
in  Switzerland  in  fullest  force.  The  inviolable  sanc- 
tities of  home  are  here  (and  have  always  been)  the 
root  of  patriotic  sentiment,  and  the  soul  of  poetry 
and  music  and  legend  and  faith.  Are  not  the  Alps 
their  monitors  in  all  generations  ?  These  mountain- 
severities  are  ethical  laws ;  these  serenities  are  loy- 
alty and  fidelity ;  this  light  and  shadow  is  the  play 
of   tenderness   and   love.     There  are  lessons  too  in 


208  THE   SWITZERLAND   OF   THE   SWISS. 

social  self-restraint;  and  in  some  neighborhoods  the 
people  have  learned  instinctively  to  adjust  their 
family  responsibilities  to  their  means  of  support,  and 
have  given  to  this  rare  wisdom  the  dignity  of  estab- 
lished rule.  There  are  no  rustic  festivals  so  common 
as  those  that  bring  together  the  people  of  the  moun- 
tains and  the  valleys.  In  Canton  Vaud  the  lake-shore 
folk  used  to  load  themselves  with  harvest  fruits  and 
go  up  to  visit  the  Alpine  herdsmen,  who  feasted  them 
with  cream  and  cheese,  and  there  was  music  and  dan- 
cing around  the  chalets  far  up  in  the  sky.  In  leafing 
time  of  the  vine,  the  national  song  commencing  on 
the  shore  was  taken  up  from  terrace  to  terrace,  and 
carried  from  height  to  height,  to  the  very  mountain 
tops.  In  autumn,  the  vintagers  lifted  their  great 
banner  inscribed  "  ora  et  labora,"  (pray  and  work) 
and  marched  through  the  streets  of  Vevey  celebrat- 
ing agriculture  with  all  Switzerland  to  see. 

That  some  taint  of  avarice  should  have  touched  a 
pinched  and  impoverished  life  is  not  strange,  nor  yet 
that  the  foreign  wealth  that  cools  and  suns  itself  so 
complacently  in  the  Swiss  summer  should  have  to 
pay  for  the  luxury.  You  cannot  set  to  work  a  people 
for  your  own  pleasure  without  making  them  seem  at 
least  to  be  mercenary.  That  the  Swiss  are  specially 
so,  I  wholly  deny,  and  with  some  experience  to  back 
me.  In  Unterwald  the  people  explain  the  absence 
of  mile-stones  and  sign-posts  by  saying  that  from 
old  times  it  was  every  one's  business  to  guide  the 
traveler  on  his  way.  I  roamed  over  Switzerland  for 
months,  yet  rarely  met  inhospitality  or  rudeness ;  and 
I  confess  I  was  not  a  little  surprised  thereat,  in  view 
of  what  the  people  have  to  endure  from  selfish  and 
arrogant  visitors. 


THE  SWITZERLAND  OF  THE  SWISS.       209 

For  free  nations,  or  states  striving  for  liberty,  to 
charge  the  Swiss  with  churlishness  is  almost  atrocious. 
This  mountain  fortress  and  its  brave  defenders  have 
been  a  refuge  to  the  thinkers  and  reformers  of  every 
race,  sect,  and  class.  The  greatest  names  in  Euro- 
pean history  are  debtors  to  them  for  happiness,  for 
health,  for  security,  for  knowledge,  or  for  final  rest. 
The  footsteps  of  Goethe  are  tracked  through  the  Gri- 
son  valleys.  The  grave  of  Schelling  is  in  the  little 
churchyard  of  Ragatz.  The  inspiration  of  Schiller 
came  in  part  from  these  lakes  and  mountains  which  he 
never  saw ;  and  who  knows  not,  that  the  lake  of  Tell 
is  musical  with  his  poetry  and  his  praise  ?  Byron 
and  Shelley,  Rousseau  and  Voltaire,  Lamartine  and 
Hugo,  Gibbon  and  Necker,  and  De  Stael,  and  a  host 
of  others  found  stimulus  for  their  best  work  on  the 
shores  of  Lake  Leman,  whose  vine-clad  hills  rise  in 
steps  of  music  to  the  heights  where  sunset  lingers 
till  the  stars  appear.  There  Parker  rested  from  an 
American  burden  and  heat  so  long  and  grandly  borne. 
There  Quinet,  crown  of  French  genius,  who  would 
not  swear  allegiance  to  a  despot,  found  a  home  among 
the  peasants  and  their  vines.  Every  spot  on  the 
mountains,  or  by  the  lakes,  which  strangers  love  to 
see,  is  identified  with  men  who  have  moved  the 
world.  The  crags  that  for  ages  frowned  on  the  rude 
fathers  of  the  wilderness  now  beckon  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Science  and  the  Pilgrims  of  Liberty  in  the 
name  of  their  children. 

The  intellect  of  the  Swiss  is  not  speculative,  but 
practical ;  free  thinking,  but  not  introversive.  They 
have  neither  Italian  intuition,  nor  French  method, 
nor  German  depth.  Their  mental  gifts  are  the  flow- 
ering of  those  qualities  that  befit  the  mountain  guide ; 
14 


210  THE   SWITZERLAND   OF   THE   SWISS. 

sharp-eyed  for  things  close  at  hand  and  for  minute 
details.  They  have  inventive  faculty,  and  some 
genius  for  discovery,  less  in  the  positive  sciences. 
And  so  the  attractions  of  the  Alps  for  men  of  science 
and  culture  secure  opportunities  which  have  helped 
to  bring  out  a  list  of  native  names  that  place  Switz- 
erland in  the  front  rank  of  nations.  Strange  as  it 
may  seem,  in  all  that  concerns  the  foundations  of 
social  order,  the  primal  floors  of  virtue,  public  and 
private,  the  Swiss  are  idealists.  I  need  but  instance 
their  patriotic  valor,  their  prevailing  morality,  their 
fine  ardor  for  the  universal  diffusion  of  knowledge, 
their  noble  philanthrophy,  —  fine  petals  all,  of  this 
human  Alp-rose  which  the  whole  world  loves  to  study 
and  admire  in  its  snow-girt  home.  Each  of  them  de- 
serves detailed  description,  on  which  it  is  impossible 
even  to  enter.  Every  form  of  benevolent  and  edu- 
cational institution  is  at  home  in  every  canton  and 
every  important  town.  From  the  noble  hospice  on 
the  mountain  pass  of  St.  Bernard,  where  Catholicism 
sends  her  relays  of  noble  monks,  each  band  to  endure 
the  rigors  of  the  climate  till  they  compel  it  to  give 
place  to  another,  that  the  traveler  may  not  perish  in 
the  snows,  the  spirit  of  mutual  aid  flows  down  through 
the  land  on  every  side,  and  crowns  every  fair  outlook 
with  its  asylum  for  the  unfortunate,  its  house  of  de- 
liverance from  some  human  ill. 

The  wisest  of  the  nations  have  sat  at  the  feet  of 
the  Swiss  educators.  The  triumphs  of  the  humble 
republic  have  been  in  laying  highways  for  the  mind 
as  well  as  the  feet.  And  the  strong  guide  who  lifts 
the  fallen  traveler  out  of  the  crevasse,  or  saves  him 
from  the  avalanche,  or  helps  him  up  the  peak  of  out- 
look and  delight,  is  presenting  in  parable  the  dealing 


THE  SWITZERLAND  OF  THE  SWISS.       211 

of  his  people  with  the  erring,  the  ignorant,  and  the 
poor.  And  so  ends  the  long  struggle  with  conditions 
that  threatened  a  helpless  self-absorption  in  the  pov- 
erty, isolation,  mutual  jealousy,  and  cramping  terrors 
of  their  mountain  world.  Do  not  the  laws  of  Nature 
justify  our  new  religion  of  absolute  trust  in  their  in- 
trinsic harmony  with  man  ?  In  this  strain,  Shelley, 
poet-prophet  of  the  century,  sang  his  grand  hymn  of 
homage  to  Mont  Blanc,  — 

"  Thou  hast  a  voice,  great  Mountain,  to  repeal 
Large  codes  of  fraud  and  wo ;  .  .  . 

The  secret  strength  of  things 
"Which  governs  thought,  and  to  the  infinite  dome 
Of  heaven  is  as  a  law,  inhabits  thee  ! 
And  what  were  thou,  and  earth,  and  stars,  and  sea. 
If  to  the  human  mind's  imaginings 
Silence  and  solitude  were  vacancy  1  " 

The  strenuous,  tenacious,  dogmatic  spirit  of  the  old 
Swiss  must  under  such  training  have  softened  into 
something  of  this  tender  relation  with  natural  laws. 
Even  out  of  such  a  temperament  and  its  bitter  ages 
of  strife,  there  has  bloomed  a  finer  flower  than  tol- 
eration, —  even  liberty  of  thought.  The  mountain 
presence  is  too  real  to  suffer  any  religious  forms  it 
has  once  suggested,  to  fail  of  an  instant  inspiration 
for  the  simple  folk,  who  are  more  intimately  moved 
by  its  motion  and  rest,  its  silence  and  sound,  its  perils 
and  its  protections,  its  all-encompassing  serenity  and 
strength,  whether  they  know  it  or  not,  than  by  any 
traditional  creed.  The  cheery  peasant  above  the 
clouds,  listening  for  the  horn  that  makes  his  wilder- 
ness glad,  is  singing  in  the  very  attitude  and  glow  of 
his  being,  though  not  in  words,  *'  On  Alpine  heights 
a  loving  Father  dwells."  And  the  Soul  of  Nature, 
nearer  than  the  man-made  Christ  of  churches,  must 


212  THE   SWITZERLAND   OF    THE   S^SS. 

have  its  part,  and  keep  it  too,  through  the  repetition 
of  Hfe-times,  in  that  seemly  ritual  of  the  Grison  shep- 
herds, when,  returning  from  high  pastures  in  tlie  au- 
tumn, the  festive  train  pauses  at  a  certain  spot,  and 
then  and  there,  with  bared  heads  and  folded  palms, 
praises  God  in  silence  for  the  blessings  of  the  year. 
Let  us  be  grateful  to  Berthold  Auerbach  for  so  gra- 
ciously fulfilling  in  his  novels  the  part  of  invisible 
guide  through  many  of  the  mysteries  of  the  spirit  in 
Alpine  homes.  And  now  let  me  take  you  to  a  pas- 
toral scene  in  Eastern  Switzerland,  that  you  may 
see  the  simplicity  of  life  with  which  freedom  loves 
to  dwell.  It  shall  be  in  the  wide  green  valley  of  the 
Upper  Rhine,  in  canton  Graubiinden,  near  Ragatz. 

It  was  a  clear,  crisp  day  in  May.  The  snow  pow- 
dered the  pines  far  up  their  climbing  hosts,  and  lay 
heaped  in  gleaming  hollows,  and  sheeted  the  long 
ridges,  and  tossed  up  against  the  tallest  granite  and 
pines.  Meadows  and  orchards  were  alike  in  bloom, 
and  the  peasants  busy  at  spring  work.  Here,  at  the 
meeting  of  many  valley  lines,  I  could  see  down  the 
long  snowy  ranges  of  the  Wallenstadt,  and  far  into 
the  blue  open  distance  of  the  Triibbach,  and  through 
the  narrowing  pathway  of  the  Rheinthal.  Tlie  nar- 
row streets  and  green  lanes  of  picturesque  old  ham- 
lets were  besprinkled  with  children  at  play,  driving 
snow  -  white  herds,  or  leading  tinkling  kids  ;  they 
would  run  freely  to  make  friends  with  the  stranger, 
or  look  up  brightly  into  my  face  when  they  spoke. 
Everybody  bade  me  a  cheery  *'  good  morning."  Girls 
sat  knitting  under  apple-trees  in  the  orchards,  between 
the  long  lines  of  sunshine  and  the  shadows  cast  by 
overhanging  cliffs,  or  came  and  went  along  the  white 
road,  bearing    burdens  on   their  upright  heads  and 


THE  SWITZERLAND   OF   THE   S\VTSS.  213 

necks.  Everybody  indeed  was  at  work.  Neat  houses 
roofed  with  daintily  rounded  shingles  and  set  off  with 
windows  like  honeycomb ;  ever-flowing  fountains,  and 
basins  overflowing,  in  whose  omnipresent  murmur 
health  and  purity  seemed  unstintingly  poured  over 
all  ;  hedges  of  thorn,  that  could  not  hide  their  fresh 
buds  and  flowers ;  quaint  old  churches  with  bell-shaped 
tower,  or  hoodlike  spire,  white  and  clear,  the  little 
Gottesacker  beside  it,  where  generations  had  lain 
down  under  the  changeless  mountain  to  be  seen  no 
more,  its  long  lines  of  gabled  crosses  beset  with  tiny 
remembrances  and  with  gleaming  letters  that  shot  out 
like  heart-flames  above  them ;  the  wood-carved  mot- 
toes on  the  houses,  devout  and  quaint;  scattered  farm- 
steads, dotting  the  high  cliffs,  or  peeping  out  of  the  ap- 
ple-blooms; chalets  nestling  with  the  eagles,  stretches 
of  pine,  then  breezy  ridges  and  mountain  stairs,  — 
all  were  folded  in  fullness  of  content,  as  though  the 
aims  of  religion  and  science  Were  accomplished  in 
a  single  idyl  of  purity,  and  man  and  nature  were  one 
and  the  same.  The  most  delicious  home-idyls  of 
modern  time,  Goethe's  "Herman  and  Dorothea,"  and 
Schiller's  "Song  of  the  Bell,"  seemed  breathing 
through  the  very  atmosphere.  Nor,  indeed,  do  I  be- 
lieve there  can  anywhere  be  a  happier  people  than 
these  Grison  Swiss. 

Let  me  try  to  share  with  you  one  twilight  scene, 
that  will  never  leave  my  memory,  on  the  threshold  of 
the  Bernese  mountains. 

Passing  through  a  green  upland  valley  while  cool 
shadows  were  descending  round  the  immeasurable 
pine  forests,  we  rounded  a  hill-shoulder  and  stood  in 
an  instant  within  the  portal  of  the  Alps.  There  was 
a  hush,  like  gentle  breathing,  all  through  the  world, 


214       THE  SWITZERLAND  OF  THE  SWISS. 

and  our  first  experience  of  Alpine  life  was  the  sinking 
of  all  things  into  rest.     The  wide,  low  intervale  be- 
neath us  first  grew  dim,  as  if  gently  receding,  and 
then    lay    cradled  within    the   shadows.     The   long 
mountain  ridge  still  stood  out  against  a  pale  sky,  but 
its  delicate  grace  and  sturdy  strength  were  relaxed 
as  if  in  sleep,  and  the  vigorous  play  of  form  and  color 
on  its  far-spread  countenance  slowly  faded  into  pas- 
siveness.     The  setting  sun  had  been  pouring  floods 
of  quiet  light  into  great  scoops  above  the  snow-line, 
as  if  their  white  faces  were  transfigured  by  an  in- 
dwelling soul.     But  now  they  seemed  to  have  yielded 
up  the  ghost,  and  assumed  that  unearthy  pallor  of 
snow  without  sunshine,  which  resembles  nothing  else 
on  land  or  sea,  all  semblance  of  force  and  feeling 
fled.     They  seemed  withdrawn  beyond  vast  spaces  of 
somewhat  as  much  beyond  death  as  death  is  far  from 
life.     Over   these    mysteries   the   familiar   deeps   of 
evening  brooded  qmetly  and  one  yellow  star  shone 
there  at  home.     The  peasants  were  returning  from 
labor,  in   groups,  a  sweet   jangle  of   herd-bells  and 
pleasant  little  voices  breaking  the  silence  and  almost 
making  it  infinite.     Patriarchal  cottages  of  immense 
size,  whose  windows  might  be  counted  by  scores,  were 
gathering  themselves  as  if  to  sleep,  under  the  heavy 
hoodlike  eaves,  dropped  gently  over  them,  so  that 
they  lay  at  last  like  brown  hillocks  on  the  russet  sod. 
Here   and   there,  as   twilight  deepened,  stole  out  a 
glimmer   from   some  casement  within    the  shadow; 
here  and  there,  through  an  open  door,  the  light  and 
crackling  of  big  brush  fires  told  us  of  the  home-circle 
and  the  evening  meal.     Groups  made  up,  as  I  think, 
of  as  many  generations  as  are  ever  permitted  to  look 
into  each  other's  faces  on   this  earth,  sat  silent  or 


THE  SWITZERLAND  OF  THE  SWISS.      215 

talking  in  underbreatli  on  long  benches  under  the 
outspread  wings  of  these  ancestral  eaves.  And  a 
father  had  gathered  his  household  in  one  quaintly 
carved  porch,  and  was  reading  aloud,  whether  an 
evening  service  I  know  not,  but  it  fell  as  a  benedic- 
tion on  the  hearts  of  the  travelers,  as  they  passed 
along  with  hushed  tread,  unseen.  And  the  silent 
prayer  rose  unbidden  within  them,  — "  May  these 
awful  Thrones  of  the  Everlasting  forever  shelter  the 
traditions  and  homes  of  free  men." 


SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  SEA. 


Humboldt's  brilliant  description  of  the  indebted- 
ness of  modern  freedom  and  science  to  the  great  epoch 
of  oceanic  discoveries  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries,  is  one  of  the  most  marvelous  pictures  in 
literature.  It  suggests  an  inquiry  into  which  that 
great  physicist  did  not  enter,  —  how  much  culture  of 
the  ideal  sort  is  due  to  the  play  of  imagination  (that 
organ  of  higher  truths)  with  the  symbolism  of  nature, 
read  and  loved  for  her  companionshij?  alone.  The 
opportunity  now  afforded  b}^  the  wealth  of  natural 
science  for  such  reaction  from  ignoble  interests  and 
coarse  competitions  is  not  more  vast  than  the  need 
of  such  healthful  play  and  noble  intimacy,  amidst 
these  material  tendencies  and  forces,  is  imperative. 
They  are  the  deliverance  that  opens  in  the  very 
bosom  of  the  flood  that  sweeps  us  on. 

In  the  historic  fulfillment  of  Solon's  vision  of  a 
great  republic  of  freedom  and  culture,  islanded  in 
the  unknown  West,  a  tradition  which  Plato  honored 
as  nobler  than  anything  in  Homer,  —  it  is  not  the 
prophecy  that  impresses  me,  nor  the  Platonic  political 
ideal,  nor  the  splendid  fortunes  of  the  new  Atlantis 
itself,  so  much  as  the  meaning,  —  for  the  higher  ele- 
ments of  personality,  of  this  passion  for  unexplored 
worlds  in  the  great  deep,  of  man's  undying  instinct 
to  plunge  into  the  unknown,  to  commit  himself  to  an 


SYMBOLISM   OF   THE    SEA.  217 

infinite  search,  problem,  resource.  This,  the  fascina- 
tion of  the  sea,  —  that  vast  silent  invitation,  summons 
alike  to  limit  and  liberty  by  which  man  is  evermore 
stirred ;  so  that  he  must  sing  with  Theognis,  listen- 
ing to  its  murmuring  in  a  spiral  shell  :  "A  dead 
form  cast  up  from  lifeless  water,  yet  speaking  with 
a  living  voice,  hath  invited  me  home." 

Now  for  us  moderns,  whether  we  dredge  or  dream 
upon  it,  whether  we  know  it  as  a  presence,  or  as  a 
bit  of  useful  contrivance  for  our  commercial  profit, 
the  sea  really  means  universality  ;  and,  whether  in 
lines  of  thought  or  business,  of  faith  in  nature,  or 
trust  in  man,  really  draws  us  to  that,  —  not  univer- 
sality as  an  abstract  idea  (the  type  of  that  is  the  at- 
mosphere), but  as  all  real,  living,  efficient  forms  of 
unity.  This  makes  it  the  true  type  of  our  times: 
first,  of  their  coinmunion  of  uses,  in  that  it  is  solvent 
and  distributor  of  the  elements,  like  the  trade  it  sus- 
tains and  floats  round  the  globe ;  next,  of  their  com- 
munion of  races,  in  that  which  they  are  speeding 
across  its  surface,  and  on  the  lightning  thread  be- 
neath it ;  and  again,  of  their  communion  of  religions, 
in  that  these  are  flowing  together.  Mediterraneans 
and  Baltics  of  faith,  into  a  grander  identity,  whose 
vast  level  sweeps  down  all  heaps  of  exclusiveness, 
just  as  science  suppresses  old  fictions  about  sea-levels, 
while  the  great  tides  go  round  the  world,  shaping  all 
spiritual  continents  by  common  laws. 

These  symbols  are  patent  to  the  practical  mind. 
But  they  are  external,  compared  to  those  meanings 
of  the  sea  for  the  free  imagination,  which  have  made 
it  in  all  ages  man's  consoler  and  strengthener,  teach- 
ing him  by  the  conditions  of  toil,  peril,  and  renun- 
ciation, the  greatness  as  well  as  the  sadness  of  his 


218  SYMBOLISM    OF  THE   SEA. 

destiny.  It  is  well  to  remember  that  the  sea  is  not 
a  mere  heaving  mass  of  salted  waves.  It  is  an  idea. 
What  broods  over  us  and  rolls  around  us  on  the 
shore,  with  stir  to  adventure  and  discovery,  is  the 
mystery  of  our  own  being,  —  that  blending  of  long- 
ing and  rest,  of  what  we  are  with  what  we  may  be, 
of  clinging  to  the  known  and  call  from  the  unknown, 
which  makes  the  pith  of  all  earnest  human  thought. 
This  bitter  brine,  this  barren  waste,  this  low  moan  as 
of  heart-break,  are  the  limitations  that  beset  our  life, 
—  our  sense  of  failure  in  the  past,  of  impotence  in 
the  present,  of  decay  in  the  future.  The  boundless 
reach,  the  mystic  winds  and  currents,  the  grand  up- 
lift of  unseen  power  over  far  horizons  into  depth  of 
sky,  are  the  ideal  insights  and  faiths  that  transform 
these  limits  into  enforcements  of  courage  and  desire. 
How  full  is  man's  speech  and  song  of  these  types  of 
his  most  nobly  human  life  ! 

Homer  compares  the  parting  of  friends,  never  to 
meet  again,  to  seamen  borne  away  from  shore  by 
stormy  winds,  watching  the  fire  kindled  by  a  shep- 
herd in  his  lonely  fold  high  among  the  hills. 

The  Hindu  proverb  says,  "  As  pieces  of  driftwood 
meeting  in  mid-ocean  remain  together  but  a  little 
while,  so  friends  and  possessions  pass;  there  is  no 
return." 

It  was  a  Greek  legend  that  one,  exempt  from  the 
common  lot  of  death,  was  dwelling  beyond  where 
ocean  stayed  its  waves,  delighting  his  heart  with 
golden-throned  morning,  which  rises,  ever  renewed, 
out  of  its  bosom.  But  when  old  age  came  on,  then 
came,  too,  the  inevitable  sorrow  for  lost  companion- 
ship and  energies  decayed  ;  there  remained  but  vain 
and  endless  yearning  for  the  happy  lot  of  men  who 


SYMBOLISM   OF    THE   SEA.  219 

have  the  power  to  die.  Philologists  may  call  this 
"fable  of  Tithonus  old,"  a  "solar  myth;  "  but  sun 
and  sea  do  not  explain,  they  do  but  voice  this  note 
of  human  sadness,  the  longing  to  escape  death,  for- 
ever joined  in  mind  with  the  conditions  of  decrepi- 
tude and  loss  involved  in  that  escape,  —  the  dull  end- 
less plash  of  low-beached  years  on  a  prisoning  shore, 
bringing  no  births  of  power  to  stem  new  perils,  or 
reach  nobler  worlds  by  loosing  the  hold  on  this. 
Such  the  meaning  of  this  old  appeal  to  the  symbol- 
ism of  the  sea.  It  is  answered  by  the  unchanging 
soul  of  poetry  after  a  thousand  generations  of  man. 

"  Oh  well  for  the  fisherman's  boy. 

That  he  shouts  with  his  sister  at  play  ! 
Oh  well  for  the  sailor  lad, 

That  he  sings  in  his  boat  on  the  bay  ! 

And  the  stately  ships  go  on 

To  the  haven  under  the  hill ; 
But  oh  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand. 

And  the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still ! 

Break,  break,  break, 

At  the  foot  of  thy  crags,  O  Sea  ! 
But  the  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead 

Will  never  come  back  to  me." 

See  where  Pindar  resorts  when  he  would  describe 
the  sacred  quest  of  love  and  duty,  singing  of  Her- 
cules that  "  He  traversed  all  lands,  and  went  through 
the  heavy  sea- waves ;  and,  having  calmed  the  mar- 
iner's path  from  fear,  he  dwells  in  joy  among  the 
blest." 

Is  that  the  mere  picture  of  the  sun's  progress 
through  the  zodiac,  which  the  labors  of  Hercules 
mean  for  the  philologist  ? 

Ocean   means   for  thinking  man   the  might  that 


220  SYMBOLISM   OF   THE  SEA. 

grows  from  patient  disciplines,  the  toil  that  earns 
victory,  the  unappeasable  purpose  that  gladly  fulfills 
all  conditions  of  success.  Thus  old  philosophers  ex- 
plained it  as  the  ''  sweat  of  the  earth,"  made  bitter 
by  straining  through  it,  or  as  made  to  seethe  and  boil 
by  the  sun's  heat,  or  as  running  swiftly  round  the 
earth  ((i/ccavos,  from  wkvs,  the  swift),  just  as  the  He- 
brew said  of  the  sun,  "  at  His  commandment  it  run- 
neth hastily.*'  The  Norse  Edda  chooses  for  a  sym- 
bol of  these  human  conditions  of  success  the  struggle 
with  the  ocean's  barrier  and  advance,  to  widen  the 
borders  of  the  land. 

"  Gefion  from  Gylfe  drove  away, 
To  add  new  land  to  Denmark's  sway,  — 
Blythe  Gefion  ploughing  in  the  smoke 
That  steamed  up  from  her  oxen-yoke  ; 
Dragging  new  lands  from  the  deep  main 
To  join  them  to  the  sweet  isle's  plain."  ^ 

Mark  the  prophecy  of  sea-born,  sea-worn  Holland, 
nurse  and  guardian  of  modern  liberties,  educational, 
political,  religious. 

The  sense  of  irreversible  moral  sequence  has  also 
lent  meaning  to  the  sea.  Grecian  tragedy  says 
"  retribution  grows  slowly,  like  the  wave  that  roUs 
up  the  black  sand."  ^ 

The  Greeks  even  held  the  ocean  to  be  the  father 
of  Nemesis,  or  ethical  requital,^  by  that  majestic  re- 
serve of  impending  natural  power  with  which  it  con- 
fronts the  unnaturalness  of  the  very  crimes  which 
yet  it  seems  so  to  shelter  that  their  success  bewilders 
our  moral  sense.  Thus  Greek  Sophocles  saw,  as  you 
and  I  have  done,  —  nor  lost  his  faith  in  the  ocean's 
higher  law,  —  that 

1  Heimskringla,  Laing,  220.  2  Sophocles,  Araigone,  586. 

8  Pausanias,  II.,  178. 


SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA.  221 

"  No  wind  retards  the  pirate's  work, 
When  his  time  comes  for  theft  and  plundering."  i 

Even  the  pirate  was  puppet  of  an  oceanic  destiny, 
not  in  his  own  purpose.  And  men  divined  a  sweep 
of  space  and  service,  of  the  sea's  own  proportion  and 
quality ;  and  thus  bards  of  the  old  Norse  kings  cele- 
brate a  courage  and  will  that  builded  states,  —  that 
spiritual  parentage  of  our  stirring  life. 

"  Eiders  of  dark-blue  ocean's  steeds ! 
The  king  who  at  the  helm  guides 
His  warlike  ship  through  clashing  tides, 
Now  gives  one  law  for  all  the  land  — 
A  heavenly  law,  which  long  shall  stand. 
A  clang  of  arms  bv  the  sea-shore  — 
And  the  shields*  sound  was  heard  no  more ; 
On  Esthland's  strand,  o'er  Swedish  graves, 
The  East  Sea  sings  her  song  of  waves."  "^ 

"  Forests  and  hills  are  not  for  me,  — 
I  love  the  moving  sea. 
Though  Canute  block  the  Sound, 
Eather  than  walk  the  ground, 
And  leave  mv  ship,  I  '11  see 
"What  my  ship  will  do  for  me."  ^ 

Was  it  piracy  that  taught  these  Norse  rovers  to 
place  their  Mimir's  well,  or  wisdom  fount,  at  the 
bottom  of  the  farthest  sea,  where  Odin  earns  it  at 
the  cost  of  an  eye  ?  That  means,  in  the  philologist's 
dictionary,  that  they  saw  the  sun's  one  orb  sink  into 
the  sea  as  if  lost.  That  may  be ;  but  the  kernel 
will  not  appear  till  we  crack  this  shell  also.  For  a 
happy  legend  is  always  a  song  out  of  the  singer's 
heart;  and  if  it  lasts  through  generations,  it  is  be- 
cause it  means  a  gospel  of  man's  ideal  life.  And 
this  is  indeed  his  Mimir's  well  beyond  ocean's  rim, 
reached  only  by  paying  the  price,  —  by  parting  with 

1  Sophocles,  Philoctetes,  643.  2  Bei'mskringla,  Laing,  passinu 

3  Id..  II..  256. 


222  SYMBOLISM   OF    THE   SEA. 

the  sight  one  had  for  a  larger  and  better  knowledge 
hidden  beyond  perilous  tracks  that  close  behind  the 
lonely  voyager  and  leave  the  next  heroic  seeker  to 
find  his  own  way  ;  yet  ever  pursued  over  sunset- 
kindled  waves  through  hopes  of  an  all-compensating 
light.  Too  much  for  the  heathen  world  to  see? 
Ah,  man  is  man,  and  the  poet  in  him  is  ever  greater 
than  the  pedant,  though  he  have  read  no  Bible  but 
his  soul.  Ideal  aspiration  and  the  battle  of  life  have, 
after  all,  one  mother-tongue,  one  in  its  elements;  and 
nature  responds  to  their  experience,  which  the  un- 
derstanding may  afterwards  analyze  or  make  more 
complex,  or  religion  fix  in  personal  symbols ;  but  the 
process  engrafts  no  new  humanity ;  it  is  ever  the 
same  spiral  conch  of  life  that  murmurs  its  prophecy 
within  the  listening  soul  of  child  or  man. 

Well !  the  fisheries  are  a  great  commercial  ques- 
tion, and  employ  the  deputies  of  nations ;  but  think 
you  this  high  diplomacy,  more  or  less  respectable, 
about  the  right  to  cod  and  haddock  alongshore,  can 
hide  the  value  of  that  old  story  of  Glaucus,  the 
mythic  fisherman,  whose  delight  in  the  vigor  of  his 
netted  prey  stirred  swift  longing  for  an  ocean  birth ; 
so  that  he  ate  the  herbs  of  the  shore,  and  became  a 
sea-god,  putting  his  human  breast  under  a  hundred 
streams  ?  Here  again,  the  human  thirst  for  irrepres- 
sible joy  and  strength  uses  the  sea  and  the  fisher's 
craft  for  its  symbol.  I  do  not  despise  the  fisheiy 
rights :  there  is  money  and  food  in  them  for  one 
nation  or  another;  but  the  old  fable  is  better:  it 
means  manhood  for  us  all.  And  thus  the  tale  goes 
on.  Then  the  gods  make  this  old  sea-lover  a  prophet, 
and  the  people  of  the  coasts  and  isles  look  to  him 
for  their  warnings   and  hopes.      And  he  it  is  that 


SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA.  223 

builds  the  Argo,  freighted  with  tragic  story  of  con- 
quests and  sympathies  for  the  Mediterranean  races, 
this  ever-thirsty  fisherman,  fed  by  the  salt  herbs 
of  the  shore.  Well,  I  think  the  poetic  truth  car- 
ries the  day  over  the  superstition  here,  and  so  in 
the  larger  belief  that  all  sea-gods  were  human  proph- 
ets. To  the  sea  belong  the  legendary  teachers  of  the 
simple  tribes  of  East  and  West,  in  the  arts  of  life. 
Out  of  its  mysteries  comes  up  Phoenician  Oannes, 
half  fish,  half  man ;  into  them  sails  away  Mexican 
Quetzalcoatl,  beautiful  fugitive  from  the  world  he 
has  blessed,  thence  to  return  in  better  days.  For 
Hindu,  Greek,  and  Hebrew,  out  of  heaving  deluge- 
waters,  come  the  good  men,  in  saving  arks,  to  repeo- 
ple  the  desert  earth.  Out  of  ocean,  after  the  "  Twi- 
light "  of  the  Norse  gods,  and  their  ending  of  the 
world,  rise  these  fresh  isles,  where  a  new  race  finds 
the  old  dice  of  destiny  unharmed  in  springing  grass. 
Do  not  new  religions  rise  thus,  from  the  unwasting 
soul,  when  the  old  are  outworn,  and  have  passed 
away?  The  Roman  poet,  Lucretius,  whose  protest 
against  superstition  anticipated  so  much  of  modern 
science,  makes  the  sea  outlast  the  world :  — 

"  Worn  out  with  age,  the  Universe  decays, 
Borne  on  and  stranded  on  the  shoals  of  time." 

It  is  a  mystic  sentence  of  the  Platonist,  Proclus, 
that  "  Ocean  is,  in  sum,  the  cause  of  all  motion,  both 
intellectual  and  natural,"  and  a  true  one,  if  we  will 
read  the  symbol  between  the  lines.  It  is  no  mere 
water-tank,  this  restless,  heaving,  many-voiced,  vast, 
mysterious  sea. 

II.  Enough  of  mythology.  Note  now  the  minis- 
tration of  the  sea  to  that  inward  renovator,  the  sense 


224  SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA. 

of  reaction  and  surprise.  The  dredge  is  now  revo- 
lutionizing our  notions  of  limit,  as  once  the  telescope 
did.  It  reports  that  the  sea-spaces  show  nowhere  a 
zero  point  of  animal  life,  nowhere  a  pressure  too  great 
for  living  tissues  ;  that  ammonia  and  water  are  there 
decomposed  by  life  without  the  agency  of  light  —  an 
impossibility  in  the  atmosphere ;  that  at  two  thousand 
fathoms  the  water  is  not  appreciably  denser.  These 
surprises  indeed  show  the  human  god,  parting  with 
his  old  sight  to  win  new  wisdom.  That  is  the  spir- 
itual sense  of  science.  Again,  we  thought  the  sea's 
bed  was  our  nearest  type  of  the  unfathomable,  but 
now  we  find  its  greatest  depth  a  little  more  than  four 
thousand  fathoms.  Yet  every  atom  of  that  depth  is 
more  unsearchable  than  ever.  That  is  the  spirit's 
report,  not  the  dredger's.  We  thought  the  bottom- 
waters  were  heated  by  the  earth-fires ;  they  are  at 
about  the  freezing  point  of  fresh  wat'er.  We  had 
visions  of  a  motionless  calm  beneath  the  waves ;  but 
there,  too,  is  the  sweep  of  currents,  passing  each 
other  like  busy  men,  and  stir  of  living  purpose.  Is 
the  sea  less  ideal  for  rebuking  dreams  of  an  idle 
heaven  and  a  purposeless  peace  ?  "  Plant-life  is 
possible  there,"  predicted  science,  "  but  animal  life 
must  surely  be  stayed  at  the  coralline  zone."  But, 
behold,  it  is  the  plant  that  is  limited,  and  the  hidden 
floors  of  nature,  bare  of  herb  or  flower,  are  thick 
with  the  sensitive  pleasure  of  infusorial  forms. 

Cross  the  Atlantic,  and  vou  shall  know  how  far 
the  ocean  can  carry  this  function  of  breaking  spells, 
and  renovating  by  surprise.  The  sea  voyage  is  a 
stream  of  oblivion.  It  devastates  the  mind  ;  vacates 
memory  ;  sweeps  away  tradition,  fiction,  routine,  and 
blind    belief ;    scatters   fixed    moods    and    haunting 


SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA.  225 

sori-ows ;  takes  you  from  your  very  self.  You  shall 
not  think,  nor  study,  nor  grieve,  nor  will,  beneath 
this  heavy  hand  of  the  sea.  That  old  personality  of 
yours,  that  looked  so  real,  suffers  a  "  sea  change ;  " 
for  you  are  drawn  apart,  as  by  ten  thousand  mag- 
nets, dissipated  on  this  restless,  heaving  space,  and 
can  but  wait  a  resurrection  in  some  new  and  won- 
drous form,  on  some  virgin  shore.  So  every  passing 
sail  is  a  white  mystery  of  expectant  faith ;  and  the 
first  land  that  looms  is  the  new-born  world,  and  the 
watchman  on  the  cliff  is  Adam,  before  the  fall. 
The  Old  World  before  you,  the  old  life  behind, 
alike  transfigured,  you  are 

"  the  first  that  ever  burst 
Into  that  silent  sea." 

Have  you  dreamed  of  waking  into  a  life  beyond 
death  ?  It  was  no  such  spiritual  uplift  as  this  new 
dawn  of  unimagined  light. 

There  is  a  poet  in  every  man,  and  his  hour  comes 
in  the  surprises  of  the  sea.  The  shout  of  Xeno- 
phon's  weary  army  at  sight  of  the  far-gleaming 
Euxine,  — "Thalatta!  Thalatta !  "  —  the  cry  of  Bal- 
boa when  the  Pacific  first  rose  to  view  over  the 
cliffs  of  Panama,  kindle  imagination  to  its  very  roots. 
Nay,  some  poor,  little,  rude  print  of  the  Dimgansby 
Head,  —  such  as  I  recall  from  my  boyhood,  —  an 
impossible  John  o'  Groat's  House,  toppling  on  an 
impossible  jut  of  rock,  over  an  inch  square  of  black 
blotch  that  meant  the  ocean,  and  the  happ}^  house- 
holder, too  big  for  his  own  house,  because  grown  to 
a  giant  with  the  familiar  vision  of  that  immensity 
which  I  could  not  see,  standing  at  gaze  on  its  tip- 
top, —  shall  set  the  child's  imagination  to  more  crea- 

15 


226  SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA. 

tive  work  than  comes  in  after  years,  by  the  grandest 
sea-truth  the  artist  ever  painted,  or  the  poet  sang. 

The  mountain  is  the  natural  type  of  strength  and 
vision  ;  the  river,  cleaving  and  carving  fresh  path- 
ways, of  reconstruction  and  reform.  But  the  sea 
means  universality  ;  the  Infinite  and  Eternal,  speak- 
ing in  its  murmur,  when  the  philosopher  cannot  find 
them  in  his  logic,  and  the  theologian  has  sunk  them 
in  his  human  God,  shall  assert  their  implication  in 
man's  ideal  life.  But  its  summons  at  the  same  time 
is  to  liberty  and  labor,  as  the  condition  of  that  life. 

This  was  what  the  Hebrew  lacked  in  his  aspir- 
ing religion,  which  was  a  lyric  of  prayer,  but  not  of 
progress  nor  of  toil.  Therefore,  while  he  longed  for 
what  he  called  the  Eternal  and  Infinite,  he  never 
loved  the  sea.  His  Jehovah  speaks  from  under  a 
firmament.  In  his  Apocalypse,  "  there  shall  be  no 
more  sea,"  as  in  the  Buddhist  Nirvana  there  shall 
be  "  no  more  wind. "  Greek,  Phoenician,  Teuton, 
would  not  have  said  either  of  those  things.  The 
Christian  follows  him  in  a  religion  inherited  from 
the  same  tendencies,  limiting  tlie  Infinite  to  a  sin- 
gle human  nucleus,  once  for  all,  instead  of  sweeping 
out  its  endless  and  boundless  tides  of  invitation  and 
possibility,  an  all-embracing  sea  of  spiritual  life. 
Here  and  there  a  mystic  sings  "  Christ  is  a  sea  of 
truth  and  love,"  but  the  metaphor  comes  hard ; 
it  is  easier  to  make  him  a  sacrificial  Lamb  or  a 
Messiah-King.  The  Hebrew  knew  not  the  terrible 
unrest  of  the  land,  —  earthquake,  volcano,  snow- 
storm on  the  prairie,  tornado  in  the  populous  town. 
He  nursed  his  creed  and  his  pride  in  his  little 
chosen  land.  From  Abraham  to  the  Maccabees,  his 
self-sacrifice  is  to  an  awful  God,  whose  hand  smites 


SYMBOLISM   OF    THE   SEA.  227 

from  beneath  the  firmament,  or  invites  to  self-sur- 
render through  blood  or  through  love,  to  what  its 
mastership  commands ;  his  is  not  the  flight  of  the 
soul  through  boundless  spaces,  with  freedom  on  its 
wings.  The  Bible  has  its  warnings  against  the  rest- 
less  pride  of  knowledge,  — the  Babel  towers  of  push- 
ing labor ;  what  would  it  have  said  to  the  perils  of 
oceanic  steam  navigation,  or  even  of  locomotion  by 
rail,  making  the  land  an  open  sea,  —  ventures  where- 
of it  could  not  even  conceive  ?  The  Hebrew  loved 
not  the  sea.  The  Chinese  is  in  his  furrow,  and 
dreads  it.  The  Hindu  is  on  his  mountain,  and  can- 
not come  down  to  it.  The  one  lacks  ideal  freedom,  the 
other  expansive  toil.  First  of  men,  the  stirring,  ven- 
turous, irrepressible  Greek  hails  the  sea  as  a  home:  — 

"  Ocean,  father  of  gods  and  men  !  " 

Let  me  try  to  picture  this  Greek  sense  ;  for  we  too 
inherit  it,  though  we  hear  but  little  about  it. 

If  you  will  look  over  a  boat's  side  on  a  breezy  day, 
along  the  water  level,  as  you  bound  past  groups  of 
islands  into  open  sea,  you  can  understand  why  men 
have  held  water  to  be  the  primal  element.  What 
productive  energy  in  this  undulation,  vital  in  every 
atom, — these  multitudinous  waves,  so  swift  to  break 
up  sunshine  into  fiery  flakes,  and  fling  it  off  in  a  rain 
of  delight !  How  mobile  and  plastic  this  liquid  ele- 
ment, obedient  to  stir  of  wind,  to  lead  of  tide  I  To 
the  unseen  brooding  powers  it  seems  to  say,  "  Shape 
me  as  you  will  —  I  am  ready  for  your  largest  as  for 
your  finest  thought  —  to  your  light  and  your  law." 
Were  they  not  right  who  said  the  earth  was  its  prod- 
uct ?  Are  not  the  green  isles  its  children,  the  con- 
tinents its  heaped  sediment,   records  of  its  secular 


228  SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA. 

art  ?  Has  it  not  piled  the  uncounted  layers  ?  Are 
they  not  its  footfalls,  its  architecture?  And  as  the 
creatures  came  swarming  in  their  time  and  order, 
has  it  not  numbered  and  fed  them,  and  laid  them  to 
rest  under  its  gentle  rain  of  atoms,  —  the  continents 
crumbled,  as  they  had  been  builded,  by  its  hand  ? 

In  this  restless  liberty  of  motion  it  is  a  natural 
human  instinct  that  reads  the  visible  conditions  of 
beauty,  order,  life.  Yes,  even  for  the  Hebrew,  "  the 
Spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters," 
ere  the  dry  land  appeared.  So  ancient  myth  and 
modern  science,  poetry  and  progress,  unite  to  hail 
the  fatherhood  of  the  sea. 

Well  may  we  fancy  this  rippling  laughter,  this 
pulsing  rise  and  fall,  this  long  commingling  and  com- 
motion, to  be  the  very  quiver  of  the  fecund  life  that 
swarms  beneath,  foreshadowing  all  forms  that  exist 
elsewhere  ;  types  of  the  bird's  wing,  the  insect's  ten- 
tacles, the  mammal's  spine,  the  human  hand,  its  won- 
drous feel  and  spread  and  muscular  grasp  ;  flowing 
types  of  every  herb  and  tree,  arborescent  coral,  par- 
terres and  rainbow  gardens  on  dull  rocks ;  types  of 
every  spiritual  fact  or  law  that  makes  penalty  or 
progress,  —  the  oyster  s  patient  deposit  of  noble  pearl 
around  the  wound  that  cannot  be  healed ;  the  holo- 
thuria,  shedding  off  what  members  he  cannot  feed, 
adapting  size  and  living  to  his  income ;  the  mining 
teredo^  finding  a  path  of  his  own  through  the  already 
riddled  timber,  without  so  much  as  crossing  or  mar- 
ring the  million  tracks  of  his  fellow  laborers ;  the 
sea-anemone^  that  can  fast  as  long  as  fate  demands, 
and  hides  his  purple  and  gold  in  dark  submerged 
rifts,  serving  uses  unseen  and  unknown  for  ages  to 
come;  the  self-perpetuating  stone  forests  that  outlive 


SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA.  229 

our  Gothic  traceries,  and  show  that  onl}^  tireless  pa- 
tience builds  for  endless  time  ;  the  echinus^  quarrying 
hard  rocks  with  delicate  spines,  that  no  repulsion  can 
discourage  ;  that  glassy  thread-work  of  gossamer  and 
star  that  girdles  the  soft  sponge^  a  fragile  grace,  un- 
harmed by  rush  of  currents,  strong  by  the  inviolable 
dignity  of  beauty  and  trust ;  the  teeming  infusorial 
tribes  that  form  mountains  and  continents  of  their 
cast-off  shells,  infinite  fecundity  of  the  minute  ;  vast 
issue  of  forces  that  live  but  to  tender  to  the  whole 
their  own  infinitesimal  lives  without  haste  or  rest,  and 
lose  themselves  in  a  world-destiny,  that  weaves  their 
moments  into  its  weft  of  countless  years ;  swept 
down  the  great  rivers  of  the  globe  in  yearly  monu- 
mental heaps,  that  dwarf  pyramids  of  kings  into 
petty  mounds  that  cover  poor  human  bones  ;  invis- 
ible batteries  that  multiply  their  fires  till  they  be- 
come seas  of  lightning  and  storms  of  electric  power, 
—  of  all  sea  wonders  the  best  type  of  spiritual  force 
and  law,  of  the  infinite  in  the  finite,  the  God  in 
the  atom,  strength  in  weakness,  liberty  in  limit,  life 
through  death. 

Look  here,  O  scientific  brother,  at  the  marvelous 
meaning  of  generative  power  ;  and  see  how  every 
step  in  evolution  involves  an  infinite  element,  that 
forever  forbids  us  to  confound  parentage  with  causal 
production,  or  to  account  for  life  only  by  that  which 
lies  behind  or  beneath  it. 

But  let  us  accept  the  laws  of  limit,  and  cling  to  the 
shore.  See  how  the  universal  meets  us  here  also. 
Take  up  a  handful  of  this  fine  sand  ;  mark  how  scent 
of  sea-weed  and  stir  of  minute  life  mingle  with  gleam- 
ing powder  of  pearly  shells,  and  friction  of  graveled 
stone.     When  the  great  deep  would  lay  its  new  foun- 


230  SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA. 

dations,  what  element  has  it  forgotten,  in  its  impartial 
art  of  evolving  that  common  earth  that  shall  be  fresh 
herb  and  flower,  and  beast  and  man  ? 

Can  you  stoop  to  what  lies  under  your  feet  ?  Mere 
bits  of  tide-water  plash,  left  in  rock-hollows,  swarm- 
ing with  eager  life,  preach  the  universality  and  spir- 
itual meaning  of  the  sea.  Sauntering  on  rocks  be- 
tween the  tide-marks,  your  feet  crush  at  every  step 
what  seem  heaps  of  salt-spray,  flung  dry  and  dead 
upon  the  shore.  They  are  the  cities  of  the  barnacle^ 
silent,  far-spread  rock-prisms,  aping  alike  the  tents 
of  the  nomad  and  the  petrified  city  of  the  poet.  Yet 
within  every  one  hides  a  wonderful  life ;  a  tender  in- 
stinct animates  every  stone-crypt  of  them  all  ;  a  pa- 
tience not  to  be  balked  is  waiting  its  hour.  When  the 
nnhasting  tide  oversweeps  these  dry  expanses  with 
its  flood  of  opportunity,  every  rock-sepulchre  opens, 
gathering  air  and  food  with  vibrations  as  regular  as 
your  pulse,  as  ardent  as  wing  of  shore  bird  flitting 
above  it.  You  have  crushed  this  dry  crackling  spray, 
without  any  of  the  scruple  that  John  Chinaman  has 
in  harming  bits  of  written  paper,  or  of  the  dread  of 
the  Jew  at  possible  treading  on  the  name  of  Jehovah. 
But  turn  and  look  at  your  track.  It  is  wet.  Every 
stone  casing  you  ground  down  held  sea-water  stored 
up  for  the  drought  of  low  tides,  within  its  parched 
cell.  Well  might  he  be  patient,  the  little  hermit,  till 
his  flood-tide  came.  How  tender  and  timely  is  the 
wide  sweep  of  instinct,  teaching  the  wild  goose  to 
find  her  path  through  "  desert  and  illimitable  air," 
and  rock-bound  barnacle  to  store  his  measured  sup- 
plies !  It  is  almost  touching  to  think  of  this  little 
living  prisoner,  more  firmly  bound  to  his  rock  as  he 
grows,  yet  making  of  the  friendly  tide  his  own  world 


SYMBOLISM  OF   THE   SEA.  231 

of  beautiful  growth,  his  liberty  of  the  limitations  of 
his  lot.  See  how,  as  he  grows,  he  adorns  the  seg- 
ments of  his  white  cone  till  they  are  ridged  like  teeth 
and  fluted  like  Ionic  columns  ;  and  on  islands  far  out 
at  sea,  I  have  wondered  at  their  bended  length  and 
graceful  slenderness  and  their  great  clustered  efflores- 
cence, covering  roods  of  rock  with  their  luxury  of 
growth  and  grace. 

But  is  this  stone-bound  creature  a  mere  passive 
fixture  ?  No  !  He  records  the  beauty  of  the  law  he 
serves.  What  more  than  that  can  you  or  I  do  with 
life  ?  and  how  many  of  us  do  it  ?  He  marches  to  the 
limit  of  the  tides,  and  registers  their  steadfast  pulse. 
See  that  creamy  line,  stretching  along  the  rocky 
shore  for  miles,  holding  its  perfect  level  round  crag 
and  through  cove,  past  beaches  and  woody  capes :  it 
is  the  barnacle's  high-water  mark.  If  a  hand  bended 
the  rainbow,  an  eye  leveled  that  line  as  well.  Can 
you  or  I  lift  and  lay  the  lines  of  conduct  in  such  har- 
mony with  the  laws  and  limits  of  our  spheres  ? 

He  can  be  tied  fast,  yet  a  traveler,  using  the 
freedom  of  another.  He  makes  fast  to  unwieldy 
crabs,  to  restless  lobsters ;  he  goes  with  swift  ships 
around  the  world.  Whatever  he  touches  he  clings 
to,  following  its  fortunes, — not  to  be  detached  with- 
out force.  What  human  quality  does  this  adhesive- 
ness suggest  ?  Obstinacy,  tenacity,  persistency,  in- 
ertia, or  faithfulness  and  love?  Each  and  all,  as 
your  mood  inclines  ;  the  sea  is  liberal  to  your  taste. 

But  what  a  hold-fast  have  these  puny  creatures  ! 
See  what  the  pretty  purple  mussel-shell  can  do. 
Those  tight  valves  will  defy  your  force  ;  no  dash  of 
tides  can  harm  them  ;  they  are  actually  weaker  than 
the  little  ligament  that  embodies  the  living  instinct 


232  SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA. 

not  to  open  that  house  to  a  destructive  prying  hand, 
though  it  be  from  a  higher  power  than  it  can  meas- 
ure. What  poor  cringing  creeds  and  revivalisms 
men  might  escape  with  a  little  of  this  valve-strength 
of  self-respect!  To  let  one's  self  be  scared  by  one's 
own  sense  of  weakness  into  unreasoning  self-abandon- 
ment to  another  as  his  soul  salvation  is  just  to  bring 
about  the  very  evil  which  makes  weakness  a  ground 
for  dread.  Well,  there  is  a  wisdom  of  weakness,  in 
barnacle  or  brain,  —  it  is  to  hold  thine  own  till  thou 
art  strong  enough  to  admit  all  comers,  or  to  repel, 
naked,  the  intruders  on  an  inward  order  they  would 
destroy.  And  cling,  O  friend,  however  venturous  it 
may  seem,  cling  to  that  which  life  has  taught  thee 
to  be  best  for  thee.  Cling,  O  human  heart,  to  what 
thou  knowest  of  thine  own  finding  ;  to  what  thou 
art  building  within  thee  after  thy  best  instinct  and 
will.  Cling,  and  the  strength  of  the  sea  shall  help 
thee.  Even  on  the  stone-bottom  of  the  pool  the  little 
patella-plates  elude  the  hand's  grasp,  and  refuse  to 
be  pushed  or  pried  from  their  hold.  Everywhere 
eager  projectors  want  to  utilize  your  force  for  their 
machinery;  but  remember,  your  force  is  in  your  own 
fit  place  and  proper  work ;  and  if  you  have  learned 
these,  and  love  them  better  than  ease,  or  fame,  or 
profit,  then  let  no  charges  of  indolence,  indifference,  or 
waste  of  power  on  what  is  of  comparatively  no  public 
worth,  disturb  your  soul,  though  the  fusillades,  which 
proved  ineffectual  to  change  it,  end  in  shelving  and 
contempt.  Be  genial  through  it  all,  as  he  who  knows 
that  he  can  make  his  own  work  shine,  but  never 
another  man's.  Do  not  be  put  to  shame  by  star-fish 
and  sea-flower  that  can  mantle  the  loneliest  hollows 
of  muddy  rocks  among  drifting  sea-weed  with  splen- 
dors of  their  own. 


SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA.  233 

The  sea  is  universal.  Its  tidal  pools  fail  not  to 
mirror  vices  also.  What  a  picture  of  monopoly  and 
greed  are  these  lightning-like  atoms,  savages  of  this 
wilderness  of  minims,  raging  in  hordes  of  compe- 
tition through  aqueous  forests.  Tartars  without  a 
Tchingis  to  give  them  laws,  and  devouring  each  other 
like  the  sharks  and  cormorants  of  human  politics  and 
trade  !  Is  it  a  metempsychosis  that  I  see  in  these 
voracious  shrimps,  making  the  pool  alive  with  their 
fierce  wriggling;  fastening  on  everything  that  can 
be  eaten,  as  the  speculator  does  on  the  rag  currency 
he  wants  to  see  thrown  in  heaps  to  his  scrambling ; 
heaping  themselves  upon  it,  and  rolling  it  up  and 
over  with  themselves  in  a  ball  of  struggling  appe- 
tites ?  Note,  too,  the  hermit-crah^  clutching  at  some 
dead  cockle,  and  burying  himself  in  its  shell,  like 
one  who  tries  to  save  his  soul  by  creeping  into  some 
outworn  creed  of  another  man's  or  another  age's 
building,  or  thrusts  himself  into  some  vicariously 
atoning  death  for  the  keeping  of  a  paltry  life. 

But  the  great  deep  has  its  types  of  character,  as 
well  as  the  petty  pool.  The  immensity  forgets  not 
personal  forces,  but  reflects  their  manifoldness  in 
speech  that  is  not  Saxon,  nor  Sanscrit,  nor  Bible  He- 
brew, nor  parlor  French,  but  human, — the  sullen  roar 
of  solitary  reefs  ;  the  generous  roll  of  all-compassing 
tides  ;  the  passionate  gurgle  and  rush  of  pent  waters 
through  hollows  that  are  their  sole  vents  ;  the  garru- 
lous rattle  over  light,  pebbly  beaches  ;  the  soft  con- 
tinuous plash  of  surf  on  smoother  floors  of  sand,  as  of 
love  in  happy  homes,  and  the  rippling  of  wavelets 
at  child's  play  about  the  rocks  ;  and  beyond  all,  low 
and  far,  yet  close  as  his  own  breathing,  the  all-dis- 
solving and  enfolding  murmur,  where  the  mystery 


234  SYMBOLISM  OF   THE   SEA. 

of  existence  finds  its  rest  in  the  Infinite  and  Eternal. 
O  mystic  pantheist,  that  solvest  doubts  and  faiths 
alike,  O  holy  sea  !  —  shall  I  dare  to  add  this  line  to 
that  grand  invocation  of  the  poet  Riickert  ? 

"  O  cradle  of  the  rising  sun,  O  holy  sea  ! 
O  grave  of  every  setting  sun,  O  holy  sea  ! 
The  morning's  and  the  evening's  red  bloom  out  from  thee, 
Two  roses  of  thy  garden-bed,  0  holy  sea  ! 
The  ships  of  thought  sail  over  thee  and  sink  in  thee  ; 
Atlantis  rests  there,  mighty  one,  O  holy  sea ! 
My  spirit  yearneth  like  the  moon  to  sink  in  thee ; 
Forth  send  me  from  thee  like  the  sun,  O  holy  sea  !  " 

Shall  I  touch  the  human  expressions  that  come 
and  go  in  the  light  of  its  countenance,  in  the  shadows 
of  its  moods  ?  What  stoic  devoutness  in  that  long, 
imperturbable  rise  and  fall,  a  pulse  that  moves  with 
nature's  law  !  Then  the  fret  and  wrinkling,  under 
wind-flaws  of  sudden  humor  or  caprice  ;  the  tossing 
of  trouble,  and  the  furrows  of  mighty  toil ;  then  the 
leaden  gloom  of  a  despondency  that  shall  arouse  and 
reveal  its  power  ;  and  then  the  peace  that  falls  upon 
its  pain  and  passion,  when  departing  day  lays  a 
benediction  along  its  furrowed  brows,  and  the  un- 
earthly touch,  the  radiant  dream  of  moonlight,  steals 
in  music  over  their  sleep,  as 

*'  God's  greatness  flows  around  our  incompleteness. 
Round  our  restlessness,  His  rest." 

.  Then  busy  life  succeeds.  On  the  blank  horizon 
the  waters  quiver  with  expectation  ;  and  the  sun  is 
born,  in  slow  evolving  purpose,  now  a  star,  now  an 
arch  of  flame,  now  a  world-egg,  now  a  lengthening 
urn  clinging  to  its  watery  hold,  at  last  a  self-freed 
orb,  girded  for  the  labors  of  the  day.  Is  it  his  liv- 
ing will  that  stirs  the  sea  with  all-consenting  desire  ? 
See  at   last  on  shore  that  plunge  of  zeal,  at  white 


SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA.  235 

heat,  against  a  granite  resistance,  that  must  yield 
at  last,  even  if  it  be  a  thousand  years  to  come  ;  and, 
close  by,  the  press  of  green  billows  over  the  jutting 
bareness  of  the  sea-wall,  as  if  to  clothe  it  anew  with 
the  warm  life  of  herb  and  tree. 

Let  me  celebrate  sea-walls^  —  long  lines  of  piled 
granite  masses,  and  rounded  pebbles  flung  far  up  low 
ledges,  on  whose  barrier  beat  and  roar  the  self-lim- 
iting tides  of  open  sea.  Here  is  the  mutual  margin 
and  equipoise  of  sea  and  land  ;  and  this  line  of  their 
meeting  is  an  endless  process,  a  fathomless  mystery. 
Past  and  future,  reminiscence  and  prescience,  unite, 
and  that  point  of  union  is  a  problem  of  thought.  It 
is  a  record  and  a  prophecy  in  one.  "  Whence  and 
whither,"  the  soul's  ceaseless  cry,  is  echoed  in  the 
untraceable  ambiguity  of  these  rolled  pebbles  whose 
infancy  was  but  the  sequel  to  stages  of  immeasurable 
time,  and  in  the  equally  untraceable  future  of  these 
solid  floors  eaten  by  the  untiring  waves.  After  all, 
then,  the  reality  is  that  point  of  union  in  the  present, 
where  stands  the  seeing  eye,  conceiving  past  and 
future  through  its  own  relations  with  this  unseen 
and  infinite  of  time.  It  is  mind  that  questions,  it  is 
mind  alone  that  holds  the  reply.  Look  not  to  the 
symbol,  but  to  that  which  it  means.  You  are  your- 
self the  solution,  and  this  the  mystery  after  all, — 
that  you  remember,  question,  dream  ;  that  you  are 
rest  and  labor ;  that  you  in  this  present  instant  com- 
bine the  liberty  and  the  duty  that  are  to  work  while 
the  day  lasts,  untroubled  by  the  impenetrable  depths 
behind  you  and  before. 

This  is  the  burden  of  the  sea- wall's  antique  rune. 
Such  a  sea-margin  is  the  life  of  the  race.  Before  or 
behind  it,  what  silence  folds  in  this  roar  and  din 


236  SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA. 

around  our  islet  of  consciousness,  our  sea-wall  of 
time !  But  what  could  any  vision  of  past  or  future 
be,  but  what  we  make  it  ?  In  what  terms,  expressed 
or  conceived,  but  what  our  conscious  mind  suggests  ? 
Islet  of  consciousness  did  I  say  ?  Say,  rather,  eye  of 
the  world,  centre  of  these  laws  of  spiritual  percep- 
tion, that  must  interpret  all  and  shape  all  to  what 
we  call  knowledge.  Despise  not  the  present  mo- 
ment. It  is  because  this  is  so  full,  so  dazzlingly 
bright,  that  past  and  future  are  so  dark  to  man. 

Over  your  track  to-day,  O  mariner  of  life,  gathers 
the  whole  meaning  of  wisdom  and  care ;  albeit  't  is 
but  a  taper's  shine  in  the  great  darkness,  to  the 
anxious  eye. 

Did  you  ever  watch  from  a  hill-top  through  the 
fall  of  night  for  the  beacon-lights  to  come  out,  one 
by  one,  along  our  New  England  coast  from  Penobscot 
to  far  Manan  ;  here  a  steady  flame,  there  a  revolving, 
now  seen,  now  lost,  but  surely  coming  round  true  to 
time  ?  Sole  hints  of  a  world  of  life,  where  all  things 
are  veiled  in  deepening  night,  they  alone  are  there 
to  prove  the  Care  that  matches  the  perils  of  the  sail- 
or's way.  The  ancients,  we  are  reminded,  made 
temples  of  their  beacons,  and  made  them  colos- 
sal, to  be  seen  far  out  at  sea.  The  great  Pharos  of 
Alexandria  was  a  light-house,  library,  and  shrine  in 
one,  type  of  united  conscience,  culture,  and  faith. 

But  for  the  sailor,  as  for  the  soul,  safety  is  in  self- 
reliance  and  a  fine  instinct  at  finding  the  way.  Pilots 
know  their  bearings  by  the  special  sound  of  the  surf 
on  every  beach  and  crag  around  them  in  the  fog. 
The  dark  is  the  best  teacher ;  do  not  quarrel  with 
mysteries  that  sharpen  the  perception  of  the  facts 
and  their  laws.     There  is  a  symbolic  wisdom  in  the 


SYMBOLISM  OF   THE  SEA.  237 

sailor's  two  chances  in  a  fog,  to  look  under  it  or  over 
it,  with  eye  at  the  mast-head  or  at  the  cutwater. 
To  lie  very  low,  when  you  cannot  get  above  the 
dark  hour,  is  often  deliverance.  And  if  both  fail, 
the  good  sailor  knows  that  he  must  nevertheless  go 
bravely  through,  patient  and  watchful,  trusting  not 
in  chart  and  compass,  old  or  new,  so  much  as  in 
his  own  soundings  and  fine  sense  of  wind  and  tide. 
His  own  soundings.  He  knows  that  is  safety  on  the 
ocean.  Why  will  he  forget  it  in  his  creed  ?  And 
will  he  have  no  eye  to  his  own  helm  among  the  veer- 
ing tempests?  "O  Neptune,"  said  one  of  old, 
"  thou  mayst  save  or  destroy  me  ;  but  whichever  it 
be,  I  will  hold  this  rudder  true." 

The  sea-shore,  we  say,  is  strewn  with  stranded 
relics  of  perishable  things ;  but  they  have  at  least 
been  borne  beyond  reach  of  storm  and  tide,  treas- 
ures of  nature  saved  up  for  nobler  purpose. 

"Here,"  as  Thoreau  says,  "our  hand  on  ocean's 
pulse,  we  can  converse  with  many  a  shipwrecked 
crew."  But  the  sea  that  makes  the  wreck  has  its 
symbolism  of  deliverance  from  all  wrecks.  And 
even  if  physical  science,  absorbed  in  analyzing  pro- 
cesses of  historical  derivation,  should  insist  that 
production  means  this  derivation,  and  this  only, 
and  remand  us  for  destiny  to  the  dust  whence  we 
sprung,  yet  nature  is  the  root  of  all  science,  and  she 
hints,  at  least,  a  larger  faith.  Immortal  life  is  be- 
yond human  comprehension,  but  so  far  as  apprehen- 
sion and  imagination  can  reach  it,  it  is  written  on 
the  sea ;  unchanging  substance ;  unbroken  unity, 
like  that  indivisibility  of  the  soul,  which  taught 
Plato  he  could  not  die ;  reach  of  voice  and  vision 
out  into  infinite   relations;    perpetual   summons  to 


238  SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA. 

larger,  freer  life ;  untroubled  rest  in  its  own  mys- 
tery, as  if  to  point  man  beyond  itself  to  that  concep- 
tion of  eternal  life,  by  which  alone  he  recognizes 
the  meaning  of  its  touch.  Not  one  flowing  wave 
but  is  fast  anchored  there. 

I  trust  you  have  not  found  this  peculiar  treat- 
ment of  the  theme,  still  less  the  theme  itself,  deserv- 
ing as  it  is  of  so  much  better  treatment  than  these 
poor  hints,  wanting  in  practical  bearing.  If  we 
would  not  have  mind  and  morals  alike  subdued  to 
the  material  things  we  work  in  for  private  accumu- 
lation and  ambition,  we  must  study  the  aesthetic  rela- 
tions of  the  world  to  man  as  its  seer  and  shaper, 
and  cherish  that  sense  of  spiritual  beauty  which 
guards  the  sanctity  and  freedom  of  the  soul,  and 
honor  the  help  which  the  senses  bring  to  noble  liv- 
ing and  genial  faith.  The  sea  is  an  idea,  a  presence, 
seen  or  unseen ;  all  about  our  life  is  that  which  it 
means.  We  may  not  know  that  we  are  walking  by 
its  side,  in  every  serious  mood,  in  every  thought  that 
defies  our  flippancies  to  questions  that  should  have 
answer  in  us  all.  But  birth  and  death  lead  straight 
to  its  mystic  shores ;  there  we  receive  the  helpless 
child ;  there  we  wave  farewells  to  the  departing ; 
nor  is  there  science,  study,  or  belief  but  will  bring  us 
up  at  last  before  the  mystery,  whereof  it  is  the  sym- 
bol, to  be  wisely  read  in  its  sternness  or  its  tender- 
ness alike.  And  if  we  can  but  bring  pure  ears  and 
silenced  passions  to  this  presence  of  the  unseen  sea, 
we  shall  doubtless  catch  the  rhythm  of  spiritual  law, 
and  calm  our  hastening  days  with  "  the  grander 
sweep  of  tides  serene." 

**I  walked  beside  the  evening  sea, 
And  dreamed  a  dream  that  could  not  be ; 


SYMBOLISM   OF   THE   SEA.  239 

The  waves  that  phmged  along  the  shore, 
Said  only  :  *  Dreamer,  dream  no  more.' 

But  still  the  legions  charged  the  beach. 
And  rang  their  battle-cry,  like  speech  ; 
But  changed  was  the  imperial  strain ; 
It  murmured  :  *  Dreamer,  dream  again.' 

It  was  my  heart,  that  like  a  sea, 

Within  my  breast  beat  ceaselessly ; 

But,  like  the  waves  along  the  shore, 

It  said  :  'dream  on,'  and  '  dream  no  more.'  " 


FULFILLMENT  OF  FUNCTIONS. 

"  Every  man  in  his  right  place." 


An  old  Eastern  proverb  says,  "  Doing  one's  own 
duty  badly  is  better  than  doing  another's  well."  Old 
indeed  are  the  laws  of  personal  function  ;  older  than 
systems  of  legislation  or  systems  of  faith  ;  deeper  too, 
and  stronger  than  our  desires ;  whatever  a  man  shall 
do,  they  shall  make  or  mar  forever.  The  intelligent 
fulfillment  of  them  is  personal  culture.  And  all  neg- 
lect or  contempt  of  their  conditions  is  failure  and 
waste.  We  shall  not  overstate  if  we  say  that  the 
proper  business  of  a  community  is  to  get  the  rule 
of  ''  every  one  to  his  own  work  "  comprehended,  ac- 
cepted, revered,  by  each  person  for  himself  and  by 
all  for  each.  Political  liberty  supersedes  caste,  oli- 
garchy, aristocracy,  every  forced  or  mechanical  sys- 
tem of  functions,  simply  in  order  to  open  the  grand 
paths  of  natural  function.  So  that  the  prime  test  of 
our  liberty  is  whether  it  is  educating  us  into  the  finer 
loyalty  of  earnestly  seeking  to  know  and  do  what  we 
can  do  best,  according  to  others  the  right  of  doing 
what  they  are  more  competent  than  we  for  doing 
well. 

The  question  of  practical  moment  is  the  bearing 
of  an  intense  competition  and  consolidation  on  this 
indispensable  loyalty.  It  is  little  to  say  that  these 
elements  fail  of  advancing  it.  They  cannot  even  give 
it  a  hearing.     The  self-pushing  and  crowded  genera- 


FULFILLMENT   OF   FUNCTIONS.  241 

tion  counts  deference  to  its  requisitions,  on  a  man's 
own  part,  as  no  less  than  folly,  and  even  as  a  sort 
of  crime  against  himself. 

How  treat  a  disease  which  infests  politics,  trade, 
manners,  education,  motives  ;  a  disease,  so  confounded 
with  the  perceptions  of  real  liberties,  and  so  fostered 
by  their  natural  stimulants,  that  it  passes  unperceived 
in  the  public  circulation  ;  to  touch  it  anywhere  involv- 
ing a  suspicion  of  treason  to  what  a  free  people  hold 
most  dear,  —  the  right  to  full  and  fair  opportunity  ? 

And  all  thoughtful  men  must  confess  the  deplor- 
able fact  that  the  strength  of  this  corruption  flows  in 
the  very  currents  of  our  indispensable  institutions. 
In  the  family,  the  school,  the  ballot — heart,  brain, 
and  hand  of  our  civilization  —  we  most  dangerously 
ignore  or  set  aside  the  truth,  that  every  one  is  doing 
what  he  can  to  suppress  the  better  services  of  others 
who  is  attempting  what  conscience,  gift,  or  training 
have  not  ordained  for  him  to  do. 

From  time  to  time  our  public  opinion  awakes  to  a 
sense  of  peril  on  some  political  field  from  this  insidi- 
ous taint,  but  we  have  not  yet  come  seriously  to  ask 
ourselves  what  is  the  root  principle  of  our  culture, 
and  what  ought  it  to  be. 

What  the  republic  wants,  with  the  free  opportunity 
it  seeks,  is  the  sense  of  its  own  proper  purpose. 

That  is  not  education,  public  or  private,  which 
aims  to  level  all  functions,  so  as  to  suit  all  capacities 
and  gratify  all  desires  ;  nor  that  which  drags  all  alike 
to  a  common  standard,  regardless  of  the  differences 
which  nature  has  implanted  in  brains  and  bodies. 
Much  or  little  as  we  may  have  accomplished  of  such 
manufacture  of  a  human  pattern  to  order,  time  surely 
brings  our  products  to  a  higher  test. 

16 


242  FULFILLMENT    OF   FUNCTIONS. 

We  educate  when  we  awake  a  self-knowledge  and 
self-command,  competent  to  choose  one's  own  func- 
tion wisely  and  honor  every  workman  who  proves 
him  or  her  self  to  be  in  the  right  place  and  work. 
Culture  will  develop  all  the  powers  ;  but  the  idea 
that  all  persons  are  to  be  made  capable  of  whatever 
place  or  work  may  offer  inducements  to  competition 
is  not  a  true  motive  in  culture.  It  is  not  merely  the 
root  of  an  excessive  school  mechanism  and  drill,  that 
trains  young  people  to  an  artificial  uniformity  and 
makes  independent  judgment  and  original  effort  im- 
possible; it  ignores  the  law  of  mutual  deference  and 
appreciation,  the  very  law  by  Avhich  social  relations 
are  preserved. 

And,  if  a  community  drops  that  controlling  prin- 
ciple, even  in  the  name  of  equality,  it  will  speedily 
find  that  nothing  remains  out  of  which  equity,  the 
only  true  equality,  can  be  shaped.  Unconditional 
expectations,  the  claim  to  have  a  lien  by  right  on 
whatever  place  or  work  one  may  desire,  is  defiance  of 
nature  and  suicide  of  power.  There  is  no  liberty,  as 
there  is  no  success,  but  in  having  the  self-control  to 
accept  one's  real  limitations  and  conform  to  real  con- 
ditions. "  I  have  mastered  music,"  said  Beethoven, 
"  by  submitting  to  her  immutable  terms."  "  Thou 
shalt  do  what  thou  wilt,"  said  Goethe,  "  if  thou  but 
wiliest  to  do  only  what  thou  canst." 

How  wide  the  bearing  of  the  simple  fact  that  to 
meddle  is  to  mar !  Is  not  "  minding  one's  own  busi- 
ness" the  true  code  of  justice,  the  music  of  social  in- 
tercourse, the  dignity  of  self-respect ;  for  every  man 
or  woman,  content,  efficiency,  inspiration,  salvation  ? 
The  task  that  is  set  by  one's  own  self-knowledge,  not 
by  projectors  or  managers,  and  advances  one's  inmost 


/ 

FULFILLMEKT    OF   FUNCTIONS.  243 

being,  adds  to  the  sum  of  public  valves  so  much 
sincerity,  thoroughness,  dignity,  faith.  "  Wisdom," 
says  the  Apocrypha,  "  remaining  in  herself,  and  be- 
ing but  one,  can  do  all  things,"  —  all  things  which  it 
is  wise  to  do ;  not  all  things  that  men  choose,  wisely 
or  unwisely,  to  attempt  doing.  One  man  for  all 
things  is  not  wisdom ;  it  is  the  essence  of  the  quack 
nostrum,  and  will  turn  all  spheres  in  the  land  into 
quackery. 

Better  than  all  our  preventive  preaching  or  our 
reformatory  disciplines  will  it  be  to  appreciate  thor- 
oughly how  much  the  need  of  being  delivered  out  of 
miserable  dilemmas,  involved  in  unsuitable  functions 
and  positions,  has  to  do  with  reconciling  people  to 
acts  of  fraud,  injustice,  impurity,  and  other  forms  of 
degradation  and  dishonor.  Our  corrective  science 
wants  a  new  inspiration  in  method  and  aims.  Hith- 
erto vice  has  been  dealt  with  on  one  hand  by  theo- 
logical dogmas,  or  self-protective  instincts,  or  blind 
contemptuous  reprobation ;  and  on  the  other,  by  edu- 
cational methods  that  assume  unconditional  right  in 
every  one  to  assume  and  manage  any  sphere  or  voca- 
tion of  life.  Now  we  must  teach  not  only  nobler  mo- 
tives and  sympathies,  but  clearer  perception  of  the 
condition  of  human  conduct.  The  social  reformer 
rightly  guards  equal  opportunity  to  all  sexes,  races, 
beliefs.  But  he  must  aim,  behind  all  that,  to  make 
this  inordinate  self-assertion,  pushing  with  blind 
greed  for  any  or  all  functions,  impossible.  The  soul 
that  must  be  quickened  under  these  ribs  of  social 
death  is  simply  the  desire,  genuine  and  earnest,  to 
know  one's  real  aptitudes ;  the  desire  to  choose  place 
and  path  according  to  just  self-estimation.  Can  we 
not,  we  Americans,  if  we  will,  exclude  crude  conceits 


244         FULFILLMENT  OF  FUNCTIONS. 

and  boundless  expectations  from  the  atmosphere  of 
culture  by  disciplines  tending  to  self-knowledge  and 
self-control  ?  Can  we  not  help  the  young  people  to 
aim  at  finding  their  real  opportunity  in  paths  of 
genial  impulse  and  pure  productiveness,  self  respect 
and  mutual  respect?  Stimulate  to  these,  and  our 
youth  shall  go  before  us,  leading  on  the  fine  training 
for  natural  functions  now  so  bitterly  lacking. 

Geographical  science,  I  observe,  is  convincing  itself 
that  the  only  path  up  into  the  great  warm  Polar  Sea 
must  lie  in  those  equilibrating  currents  of  the  Atlantic 
and  Pacific,  which  flow  straight  from  equator  to  poles. 
Made  wise  all  at  once,  like  the  courtiers,  who  saw 
how  easily  the  egg  could  be  made  to  stand  on  its  end, 
we  ask  with  open  eyes,  "  Where  else  should  it  lie  ? 
Why  has  not  this  plain  Gulf  Stream  track  been  fol- 
lowed long  ago,  and  many  a  brave  life  saved  ?  "  So 
every  youth  has  one  path,  only  one,  to  the  broad, 
free  life  beyond  ices  and  storms  that  wreck  so  many 
bright  and  bold  ventures,  —  to  find  and  obey  the 
genuine  straightforward  currents,  wherein  his  con- 
science, faculty,  and  desire  can  flow  as  one.  No  wild, 
aimless  pushing,  but  these  natural  lines  of  flow  and 
warmth  lead  on  to  where  the  pole-star  of  his  ideal 
life  shall  shine  overhead,  and  the  open  sea  of  his 
proper  love  and  duty  expand  around  him. 

Never  are  our  powers  their  real  selves  till  they 
have  found  their  true  relations  to  life  and  labor.  A 
vice  is  a  weed,  a  flower  out  of  place,  a  forced  plant,  a 
good  seed  in  the  dark,  run  to  leaf  and  stem.  Though 
conditions  do  not  make  character,  yet  character  has 
its  conditions  ;  and  a  high  order  of  character  comes  of 
not  being  cheated  of  the  self-estimating  and  self-di- 
recting energy,  that  insures  finding  one's  fit  place  and 
work. 


FULFILLMENT   OF  FUNCTIONS.  246 

If  a  tithe  of  the  effort  wliich  is  now  spent  on  pre- 
determining the  paths  and  positions  of  young  peo- 
ple by  social  exclusiveness,  by  idolatry  of  fashion,  by 
contempt  of  industry,  or  the  selfishness  that  traffics 
away  their  future  to  gratify  parental  vanities,  mak- 
ing Sodom  of  cities  and  barbarizing  education,  trade, 
and  work,  were  turned  to  study  of  the  laws  of  func- 
tion and  limit,  we  should  not  wait  long  for  the 
"  sweeter  manners,  purer  laws,"  for  which  we  yearn ! 
The  need  goes  back  of  theology  or  science.  It  should 
dictate  methods  in  church,  and  school,  and  politics. 
Of  religion  and  morality  the  very  rectitude  lies  in 
truth  of  personal  relation.  The  modesty,  the  noble 
shame  at  ignorant  and  crude  intermeddling,  the  lei- 
sure from  self-pushing  to  seek  fit  qualities  in  other 
men  for  recognition  and  honor,  is  as  indispensable 
to  citizenship  as  it  is  to  civility  ;  and  without  it  we 
may  call  ourselves  what  we  will,  we  shall  be  but  be- 
dizened barbarians,  after  all,  our  politics  a  scalping 
raid  of  painted  savages,  —  Goths  and  Vandals  in  a 
new  form  ;  yet  without  the  robust  force  that  so  re- 
deemed those  spendthrifts  and  filibusters,  that  they 
could  purify  an  old  civilization  as  all  this  self-indul- 
gence is  demoralizing  a  new  one.  Through  this  din 
where  all  are  speaking,  and  this  rage  where  all  are 
grasping,  there  rises  a  stifled  cry,  a  pleading  for  es- 
cape from  false  and  mistaken  positions  with  their 
misery  and  waste  and  sin.  All  our  luxury,  scientific 
resource,  enthusiasm  for  art  and  letters,  all  the  pas- 
sion for  mutual  stimulation,  all  the  magnetism  of  as- 
sociation, cannot  cover  the  helplessness  of  multitudes, 
as  of  the  naked  or  blind,  before  desires  and  ventures 
such  as  are  foredoomed  by  the  irresistible  decree  of 
nature  to  be  fatal  to  genuineness  and  freedom,  and 
to  make  life  at  best  a  failure  and  a  fraud. 


246         FULFILLMENT  OF  FUNCTIONS. 

So  the  brilliant  civilization  has  its  bitter  fruits, 
and  they  remand  us  to  the  neglected  law  of  true 
and  fit  relation.  We  may  well  rejoice  in  the  penal- 
ties which  enforce  its  claims  in  the  most  external 
and  practical  spheres.  For  this  accord  with  func- 
tion, this  truth  of  attitude  and  position,  is,  in  fact, 
the  secret  of  spiritual  grace  and  growth.  Win  this 
and  all  is  saved,  —  the  harmony  of  man  with  nature, 
which  is  science,  with  progress,  which  is  liberty. 

How  full  is  nature  of  this  symbolism  of  function 
and  relation  !  Does  not  where  I  stand  make  my  con- 
ception of  the  ocean's  level,  the  mountain's  height  ? 
Not  mere  vibrations  of  ether  are  light  and  color,  but 
what  the  fine  attitude  and  dividing  angles  of  the  eye 
change  these  vibrations  into,  as  they  strike  its  lenses ; 
taking  on,  let  not  our  science  forget,  more  wonderful 
changes  still,  according  to  the  attitude  and  relation  of 
the  imvard  eye,  which  the  outward  only  reports,  from 
the  rude  sense  which  sees  a  primrose  as  "  a  yellow 
primrose,"  and  as  "  nothing  more,"  to  the  painter 
Angelico's  spiritual  vision,  that  blended  colors  into 
pure  heart-waves  of  sympathy,  sacrifice,  and  prayer. 

What  else  is  science  trying  to  say  now  in  its  me- 
ridian when  it  pronounces  specialization  of  functions 
the  mark  of  advance  in  organic  forms,  and  a  crude 
performance  of  all  functions  by  each  part  the  sign 
of  the  lowest  stages  of  life?  What  are  "natural 
selection  "  and  "  survival  of  the  fittest,"  but  the  per- 
petual edict  of  right  relation,  —  each  to  his  own  place 
and  in  his  own  hour,  in  the  name  of  universal  order  ? 
Do  we  expect  to  change  all  this  in  its  human  forms 
by  theories  of  unconditional  equality,  or  systems  of 
uniform  drill  ? 

In  nature  the  moral  element  of  free  choice  is  lack- 


FULFILLMENT   OF  FUNCTIONS.  247 

ing.  But  let  us  not  deceive  ourselves.  No  more 
than  natural  order  is  social  or  political  order,  a  mere 
power  of  seizing  and  using  a  sphere  or  relations 
adroitly  ;  it  is  no  mere  science  of  management,  no 
cunning  aptitude,  nor  marvelous  working  force  in 
certain  lives,  that  makes  functions  productive  or  even 
safe. 

The  root  vice  of  our  politics  is  an  insane  expecta- 
tion of  getting  the  benefit  of  sharpness  and  smart- 
ness, without  injury  from  any  moral  defects  that  are 
confessedly  linked  with  them  in  personal  character. 
Somehow  it  is  hoped  that  in  the  available  candidate 
the  ordinary  laws  of  ethical  cause  and  effect  will  be 
reversed.  But  they  are  not  reversed.  Not  even  in 
politics  can  you  get  true  service  out  of  false  hearts ; 
to-day's  gain  is  but  a  lure  to  tenfold  loss  to-morrow. 
We  cannot  cozen  nature  with  our  false  labels.  She 
pays  coin  for  coin  only ;  will  take  no  insults,  and 
punishes  on,  till  we  pay  honest  measure  and  drop 
our  loaded  dice.  A  hundred  Credits  Mohiliers  are 
not  so  bad  as  the  failure  of  faith  in  each  other's 
virtue. 

No !  the  saving  leaven  is  a  sentiment.  It  is  re- 
spect for  the  right  of  each  place  to  be  filled  by  the 
best  and  for  the  best  ends  which  restrains  from  in- 
trusion on  the  domain  this  rule  would  assign  to  an- 
other. It  is  a  dread  of  abusing  or  perverting  trusts  ; 
an  ardor  to  be  genuine  ourselves,  and  to  find  the 
rightly  disciplined  natures  for  whose  guidance  our  so- 
cial orbits  wait. 

The  so-called  practical  politician  and  man  of  busi- 
ness shrugs  his  shoulders  at  this  idealism.  But  what 
other  starting-point  of  reform  can  he  propose  ?  Must 
we  not  at  least  make  a  beginning  ?     Are  ideal  re- 


248  FULFILLMENT    OF   FUNCTIONS. 

spousibilities  out  of  place  for  a  people  whose  claim  of 
practical  rights  is  of  the  most  ideal  description  ?  Or 
do  we  expect  to  maintain  the  rights  without  fulfilling 
the  duties  that  match  them,  soaring  to  the  ether  with- 
out the  eagle's  eyes  and  wings  ?  That  is  the  suicide 
of  liberty.  That  shrug  of  the  practical  shoulders 
confirms  the  charge  we  have  made.  The  first  radical 
steps  of  improvement  are  yet  to  be  taken ;  we  do  not 
even  recognize  that  there  can  be  any  difference  be- 
tween individuals  as  to  the  right  to  hold,  or  the  ability 
to  fill,  any  places  they  can  succeed  in  obtaining. 

In  the  absence  of  such  recognition  of  real  distinc- 
tions, what  must  be  the  end  of  our  consolidated  ma- 
chinery of  popular  instruction?  To  what  are  tend- 
ing these  common  standards  and  rules  for  all,  these 
common  expectations  and  desires  for  all,  enforced 
by  increasing  uniformity  in  methods  of  drill?  To 
leave  so  little  margin  for  the  sense  of  distinctive 
tastes  and  faculties,  so  little  space  for  the  self-deter- 
mination of  the  ideal,  for  knowledge  of  real  limits  or 
real  powers,  and  drown  the  sense  of  allegiance  to  that 
force  which  one  really  is,  or  may  properly  become,  in 
a  vague,  unchartered,  and  unchastened  desire  of  free 
ownership  in  all  spheres,  for  each  and  all  alike, — 
what  subversion  of  culture  it  is  I  Uniformity  enough 
to  lay  the  foundations  for  universal  duties  and  ac- 
quirements is  one  thing,  but  uniformity  become  abso- 
lutism, all-penetrating  and  all-controlling,  is  another, 
and  as  much  the  peril  of  a  free  state  as  it  is  the  power 
of  a  despotic  one.  As  an  illustration,  observe  the 
style  of  reading  now  almost  universal  in  our  schools, 
—  that  mechanical  tone  so  fearfully  and  wonderfully 
made  out  of  crude  conformity  and  self-asserting  final- 
ity, its  totally  depraved    emphasis  that   hovers  be- 


FULFILLMENT   OF   FUNCTIONS.  249 

tween  that  of  the  auction-stand  and  that  of  the  popular 
stage.  Whence  comes  it,  do  you  ask?  It  is  no  mere 
childish  sing-song,  but  the  native  result  of  the  false 
principle  systematically  enforced  by  reading  in  con- 
cert, and  by  other  forms  of  mechanized  drill,  —  that 
there  is  but  one  way  of  reading  your  sentence,  from 
which  no  scholar  shall  dare  to  swerve.  So  if  you 
hear  one,  you  have  heard  all.  You  would  think 
there  was  but  one  machine,  instead  of  a  hundred 
minds  ;  that  the  human  spirit  had  but  one  string  to 
play  on  in  all  these  fresh  harps,  and  that  a  cracked 
one  ;  that  mind  and  feeling  were  out  of  place  in  the 
rendering  of  Tennyson  or  Shakespeare,  and  that  a 
poet's  melodies  were  meant  for  a  drill-practice  in  bad 
delivery.  I  think  it  would  surely  drive  the  former 
of  these  out  of  his  seven  wits  to  hear  his  Bugle-Song 
read  in  concert  as  they  read  it  in  our  city  schools. 
Nowhere  will  one  feel  more  painfully  conscious  that 
the  grind  of  the  hand-organ  has  become  organic,  I 
had  almost  said  national,  than  in  the  public  exhibi- 
tions of  most  of  our  schools. 

The  school  grades  and  competitive  examinations 
drive  all  as  nearly  abreast  as  possible,  rewarding  the 
ready  brain,  punishing  the  slow  one,  giving  to  him 
who  hath,  taking  from  him  who  hath  not  what  hope 
he  hath;  and  all  on  the  same  false  ground  of  one 
rule  for  all  and  one  capability  in  all.  We  put  the 
little  ones  through  a  common  strife  for  the  same  dis- 
tinctions, treating  one  whom  nature  has  foredoomed 
to  fail  as  if  he  belonged  on  the  same  plane  with  one 
who  is  sure  to  succeed.  Our  monstrous  school-houses 
are  types  of  the  uniformities  of  mechanism  to  which 
we  are  subjecting  the  mind,  —  huge  barracks,  wheie 
the  juvenile  battalions  shall  learn  a  military  precision 


250  FULFILLMENT   OF  FUNCTIONS. 

in  their  prescribed  mental  movements,  suppress  all 
peculiarities,  and  grow  up  in  due  awe  of  masses,  num- 
bers, and  organizations,  that  will  still  further  master 
their  individuality  in  the  political  field. 

I  do  not  mean  to  be  captious,  nor  to  overlook  the 
merits  interwoven  with  the  faults.  These  faults  are 
incident  to  the  great  experiment  of  popular  self-edu- 
cation. Mechanism  and  manufacture  are  applied  to 
mind,  as  they  are  to  matter,  as  the  easiest  and  sim- 
plest way.  We  have  as  yet  scarcely  begun  to  ap- 
preciate the  real  meaning  of  this  momentous  work  of 
providing  fit  means  for  doing  well  what  cannot  be 
left  half  done.  We  must  make  our  interest  in  edu- 
cation threefold  what  it  is  ;  count  it  of  more  moment 
than  markets  or  churches  to  a  people  ;  put  a  hun- 
dred dollars  for  ten,  wise  superintendents  for  igno- 
rant and  contentious  committees,  more  teachers  with 
fewer  pupils  to  each,  and  chosen  for  gifts  too  rare 
to  be  had  without  skillful  search  and  due  respect, 
not  for  aptness  in  drilling  a  hundred  as  one,  but  for 
the  rarer  insight  and  sympathy  that  knows  how  to 
bring  out  of  one  a  nobler  import  than  any  heap  of 
mere  numbers  can  show.  Our  self-laudations  over  our 
educational  system  are  premature.  The  wisest  ex- 
perts know  the  schools  to  be  in  their  infancy.  What 
they  want  most  is  the  moral  inspiration  to  which  all 
this  mechanism  closes  the  door  :  a  public  sentiment 
appreciative  of  high  personal  qualities  in  teachers, 
and  intent  on  finding  and  advancing  them.  I  believe 
that  when  we  have  attained  the  spirit  I  speak  of  in 
our  public  and  social  life,  its  subtle  stimulus  will  be 
found  in  the  school  also. 

But  no  school  methods  can  supply  the  lack  of  man- 
hood and  womanhood.     Home-cultures  lie  behind  the 


FULFILLMENT   OF  FUNCTIONS.  251 

school  system.  The  separate  life  of  the  family  is  the 
seed-ground  of  individual  character  ;  and  it  is  in  our 
homes  that  the  reform  of  our  civilization  must  begin. 
Here  again  the  indispensable  thing  is  to  break  up  the 
crude  and  conceited  democracy  now  prevalent  in  them 
also.  There  must  be  recognition  of  the  wise  author- 
ity, that  knows  how  to  transfer  itself  over  into  the 
child's  conscience,  there  becoming  an  inward  freedom ; 
and  practical  illustration  given  him  of  mastery  over 
the  self-indulgence  and  love  of  display  that  infect 
him  with  a  barbarian  lust  of  appropriation.  There 
must  be  more  thought  and  conversation  on  such  books 
and  persons  as  will  lead  into  some  quiet  sphere  of 
ideal  aim  apart  from  the  world ;  more  association  of 
the  ideal  of  gain  with  the  sacrifice  of  lower  desires, 
of  truth  with  toil,  and  of  success  with  the  honest  ful- 
fillment of  its  conditions  ;  so  that  the  heaven  of  home 
shall  not  be  expected  without  the  steadfast  love  and 
patience  that  must  win  it,  nor  the  honor  and  confi- 
dence of  men  without  the  faithful  service  that  deserves 
them.  There  must  be  more  culture  of  that  insight 
into  other  people's  gifts  and  claims  which  grows  out 
of  self-restraint  and  ripens  into  self-respect. 

These  are  the  disciplines  of  a  free  people,  their 
saviours  from  French  destructiveness  and  Russian 
inertia,  from  the  dead-levels  of  democracy  and  au- 
tocracy ;  they  are  the  generators  of  original  mind 
and  noble  sympathies,  and  of  work  that  is  fairly  and 
finely  done  because  it  is  wisely  chosen  and  inwardly 
loved. 

I  have  criticised  our  school  methods.  I  do  not  less 
appreciate  the  free  schools  in  their  principle,  the 
broad  foundation  they  aim  to  lay,  in  equal  oppor- 
tunity and  preparatory  discipline,  for  the  common 


252  FULFILLMENT  OF   FL^^CTIONS. 

tasks  of  citizens.  Let  us  perfect  them  at  the  North, 
and  stretch  their  net-work  over  the  South.  Let  us 
fully  secularize  and  emancipate  them.  But  let  us 
attend  to  a  matter  that  lies  behind  everything  else, 
which  they  ignore,  —  respect  for  that  internal  force, 
and  personal  function,  without  which  all  their  teach- 
ing fails,  and  the  grown-up  youth  goes  forth  to 
mischief,  with  the  edge-tools  of  politics  and  trade, 
fencing  with  drawn  knives  over  our  heads,  tinkering 
at  our  laws  and  liberties,  as  the  mountebanks  tamper 
with  our  senses  and  nerves.  The  want  of  this  sen- 
timent in  education  makes  the  best  part  of  school 
discipline  itself  drop  out,  like  the  bottom  of  a  basket, 
just  when  it  should  come  to  use.  The  boy  who 
shall  do  no  slovenly  work  at  the  black-board  is 
turned  loose  into  politics  and  trade,  with  no  higher 
ideal  than  "  to  the  victors  belong  the  spoils."  But 
what  else  can  be  looked  for,  where  no  training  is 
sought  or  demanded  beyond  the  skill  to  seize  the 
tools  and  reap  the  fruit  of  exploiting  them  ?  "  My 
freedom!  "  cries  the  impatient  youth.  Freedom  for 
what  ?  For  whom  ?  For  powers  that  have  never 
learned  to  attempt  one  wise,  sure,  or  earnest  step 
to  find  their  proper  work  ?  For  the  community,  de- 
graded and  impoverished  by  perversion  of  functions 
and  trusts  ?  O  Young  America,  not  even  for  you  is 
there  freedom  but  in  the  use  of  powers  in  their 
proper  place,  and  at  work  which  they  love  and 
honor  enough  to  do  it  after  their  best  way.  Popular 
liberty  is  yet  to  be  earned.  It  will  come  when  we 
protect  ourselves  against  all  work  but  such  as  this. 
It  will  come  when  we  facilitate  and  insist  on  a 
proper  training  for  all  functions.  It  will  come  when 
we    account    official  positions,   not   as  prizes  to  be 


FULFILLMENT    OF   FUNCTIONS.  253 

seized,  but  as  outposts  of  peril  for  sleepless  con- 
sciences to  guard.  It  will  come  when  we  make  such 
estimate  the  alphabet  of  political  culture. 

The  American  takes  his  oath  to  public  opinion  in 
the  name  of  freedom.  But  public  opinion  is  not  free, 
so  long  as  it  does  not  say  to  egotist  and  charlatan, 
"  Who  gave  you  the  right  to  do  as  you  please  with 
the  common  good,  to  set  example  of  unscrupulous 
work,  to  poison  public  confidence  and  scuttle  the 
State  ?  '*  Public  opinion  is  not  free  so  long  as  it  in- 
cessantly claims  every  one  for  everything,  and  leaves 
itself  no  chance  for  finding  thorough  service  in  any 
pursuit.  A  general  acquaintance  with  all  public 
interests  is  of  course  indispensable  to  republican 
life.  But  there  is  no  tyranny,  after  all,  more 
terrible  than  the  public  opinion  which  forces  all 
men  into  availability  for  all  uses ;  and  when  that 
comes  to  be  the  ruling  motive  in  education,  liberty 
of  choice  and  sense  of  limit  are  at  an  end,  and 
a  wretched  general  cramming  succeeds ;  fidelity  to 
special  tasks  is  impossible  ;  in  this  enforced  distrac- 
tion and  dissipation,  self-culture  vanishes,  and  vain 
ambitions  and  wild  expectations  spring  up  like 
weeds  in  the  wilderness.  Public  opinion  will  gener- 
ate liberty  when  it  leaves  margin  for  the  personal- 
ity to  choose  and  follow  out  its  work.  The  freedom 
of  public  sentiment  is  in  a  certain  delicate  forecast, 
like  telegraphic  warnings  on  the  railroad  tracks,  that 
can  intimate,  even  to  the  best  public  servants,  when 
they  approach  a  false  position  or  a  new  emergency 
unsuited  to  their  gifts,  —  a  danger  in  the  way  of 
almost  every  man,  whatever  his  powers  or  his  services. 
The  great  downfalls,  or  *^  recreancies,"  as  we  call 
them,  are  apt  to  result   from    some    fresh    turn  of 


254  FULFILLMENT   OF   FUNCTIONS. 

events,  which  suddenly  puts  men  out  of  place.  Then 
personal  defects  pass  into  forms  of  public  detriment, 
and  good  men  mourn  a  *'  lost  leader."  Such  was 
Mr.  Seward  when  the  appeal  from  ideas  to  bayonets 
disqualified  and  smote  him  blind  ;  and  the  prophet 
of  education  and  humanity,  of  Plymouth  Rock  ideas 
and  Pacific-Coast  progress  and  the  "irrepressible 
conflict "  of  liberty,  was  found  aimlessly  shaking  the 
conjurer's  staff  of  his  "  ninety  days'  "  illusion  against 
the  portentous  revolt  of  barbarism  against  civiliza- 
tion. A  strange  power  is  this  shifting  of  the  scenes, 
that  brings  men  into  false  positions.  Often  these 
are  made  by  gusts  of  a  less  tangible  kind.  Even 
wise  and  noble  persons  seem,  in  the  hands  of  their 
own  physical  fluctuations  or  personal  moods,  like 
figures  in  a  magic  lantern,  which  a  touch  throws  out 
of  focus,  and  into  such  shapes  that  we  do  not  know 
them.  As  slight  a  touch  will  perhaps  right  them 
again,  if  they  but  tend  of  themselves  to  find  and 
keep  their  true  place.  And  we  want  the  public 
power  that  stimulates  men  to  nobleness  by  its  appre- 
ciation, rather  than  frightens  them  into  falsehood  by 
its  frown. 

But  what  shall  be  done  with  the  tens  of  thousands 
who  never  had  an  idea  of  fitness  for  public  functions, 
yet  expect  to  fill  them  all  ?  What  charity  can  cover 
the  greed  for  place  that  has  almost  utterly  disso- 
ciated place  from  duty  in  the  public  mind  ?  What 
shall  defeat  the  incessant  trick  of  masking  selfish- 
ness in  the  purest  liveries  and  best  logic  of  the  polit- 
ical hour  ?  Here  is  the  voter's  bewilderment.  You 
doubt  not,  a  moment,  as  to  the  side  or  the  measure 
you  should  sustain.  But  how  escape  being  used  by 
the  sharp  hucksters  of  office,  who  infest  the  right  side 


FULFILLMENT  OF  FUNCTIONS.         255 

when  it  is  the  strong  side,  —  fluent  and  plausible 
managers,  who  have  reduced  the  mechanism  of  the 
caucus  to  an  art ;  who  work  the  wires  to  force  your 
support,  seizing  all  gates,  foreclosing  choice,  parcel- 
ing out  penalties  and  spoils  ?  There  is  but  one 
remedy,  —  resolutely  to  put  into  our  education,  from 
the  cradle  upwards,  the  idea  that  office  is  not  a  prize 
to  be  snatched  for,  but  a  function  to  be  deposited 
with  the  best ;  utterly  to  dissociate  it  from  the  notion 
of  personal  claims,  and  to  substitute  for  the  rage  of 
rotation  the  principle  of  holding  fast  to  official  expe- 
rience and  virtue. 

Above  all,  must  individual  culture  be  guarded 
from  the  tyranny  of  mere  mass-power.  Nothing 
compensates  for  the  lack  of  that  delicate  tact  of  self- 
knowledge  and  self-respect,  those  fine,  warning  sig- 
nal-wires of  the  soul,  which  prevent  men  from  push- 
ing in  where  every  step  must  be  a  temptation,  and 
every  act  a  public  mischief.  To  follow  the  star  of 
one's  real  capacities  with  content  and  faith  is  the 
secret  of  freedom.  This  meets  the  problems  of  re- 
publican liberty,  of  labor  reform,  of  equal  opportunity 
for  race  and  sex,  of  personal  inspiration  and  success. 

If  every  one  out  of  his  place  is  a  public  mischief, 
every  one  cheated  of  his  gift  and  its  use  is  so  much 
waste  and  leakage,  and  an  impeachment  of  our  civil- 
ization. God  puts  no  more  force  into  a  community 
than  there  is  need  of.  Laws  of  economy,  higher 
than  our  statutes,  say,  "  Dare  not  suppress  in  man 
or  woman  one  capacity  to  serve  society,  or  one  power 
of  self-development,  in  whatever  sphere  of  politics, 
trade,  art,  manners ;  but  as  you  value  the  common 
security,  content,  progress,  help  him  or  her  to  find 
that^  and  to  bring  it  out."     Then  equal  opportunity 


256  FULFILLMENT   OF  FUNCTIONS. 

follows,  in  all  safe  and  healthy  paths.  What  is  the 
greatest  fountain  of  demoralization  ?  Surely  not  ma- 
lignity, but  aimlessness,  bewilderment,  want  of  such 
work  as  healthfully  busies  men  because  it  is  what 
they  are  made  for,  and  what  brings  reward  in  the 
doing. 

Let  us  make  all  haste  to  learn  this.  It  is  not 
what  one  has  had  given  him  that  helps  him,  but 
what  he  loves  to  do,  and  so  can  do  well.  Do  we 
not  see  this  every  day  ?  Inheriting  a  fortune  shall 
probably  ruin  a  youth ;  discovering  an  aptitude  shall 
make  him  a  man.  Let  him  but  find  that  which  he 
can  love  better  than  his  own  ease,  and  his  feet  are 
at  once  on  the  track  of  honor,  of  power,  of  joy.  He 
shall  be  an  artist  of  the  beautiful,  or  an  opener  of  the 
paths  of  truth ;  or  his  speech  shall  drop  on  men,  and 
they  shall  wait  for  him  as  earth  for  the  rain.  He 
shall  show  how  to  rise  elastic  from  defeat,  and  to 
walk  with  fate  as  with  a  friend.  Find  what  fact  of 
nature  or  form  of  art  puts  life  into  a  child's  fingers 
or  feet,  or  makes  his  eye  kindle,  and  you  may  dis- 
pense with  much  preaching  and  school  drill,  and 
many  anxious  thoughts.  Clear  the  way  for  his  love, 
and  his  function  follows.  Set  him  to  do  what  he 
loves  not,  and  water  shall  run  up  hill  sooner  than  he 
shall  stop  running  down.  Find  his  faculty,  and  he 
shall  play  at  his  task,  and  distance  machinery  in  the 
quality  of  his  product,  and  wonder  at  the  ease  with 
which  he  masters  obstacles  and  makes  material  tell. 
Who  can  estimate  the  faculty  wasted,  the  conscience 
wrecked,  in  the  hideous  fetichism  of  modern  dress  ? 
But  I  think  a  woman  of  fashion  will  cast  off  baubles 
when  she  has  set  her  heart  on  something  real  to  be 
done  with  body  and  brain.     Theologies  have  crazed 


FULFILLMENT   OF  FUNCTIONS.  257 

men's  brains  with  vain  imaginations  about  the  fu- 
ture. What  superstitions  have  come  of  rushing 
blindly  at  the  unknown ;  making  for  the  next  life  as 
the  politicians  for  offices ;  laying  hold  on  it  with  fac- 
ulties of  sense  and  logic  that  are  and  must  be  wholly 
out  of  place,  and  crude  and  fear-bound  at  that !  The 
superstitions  about  another  life  will  vanish  as  we 
come  fully  into  true  relations  with  this  life,  and  put 
gifts  to  sane  and  noble  uses  here. 

What  are  health  and  spirits,  clear  eyes  and  strong, 
skillful  hands,  and  elastic  step,  and  mastery  of  sun- 
shine and  storm,  but  the  body,  doing  its  own  work  fitly 
in  every  part  ?  I  wish  we  may  all  have  the  clear- 
est conviction  that  there  is  no  health  for  the  inward 
man  or  woman  but  upon  like  conditions.  Did  we 
but  dare  to  be  neither  more,  nor  less,  nor  any  other 
than  what  by  nature  we  can  truly  and  honorably  be ! 
I  suggest  a  prayer  not  put  up  in  the  churches :  — 
May  neither  my  own  conceit  nor  the  expectation  of 
others  seduce  me  into  trying  to  show  for  what  I 
have  no  proper  power  nor  call  to  become.  May  I  do 
my  own  part  well,  and  be  ashamed,  not  for  the  gift 
I  lack,  but  for  the  gift  I  squander,  since  it  is  not 
my  business  to  do  all  things,  but  to  do  what  I  can 
do  without  spoiling  either  my  special  force  or  my 
proper  self-respect.  May  I  feel  bound  to  the  wise 
friendship  that  hints  to  me  when  I  am  out  of  my 
place.  And  may  I  be  true  enough  to  know  when 
the  hint  is  just  and  should  be  taken. 

Have  you  not  seen  that  there  is  something  beyond 
thoroughness  in  work  lovingly  done  ?  That  is  the 
old  primitive  meaning  of  honesty.  I  can  see  it  in  a 
bit  of  carpentering  as  plainly  as  in  a  great  poem. 
What  is  the  secret  of  productive  work,  the  true  la- 

17 


258  FULFILLMENT   OF   FUNCTIONS. 

bor-reform  ?  What  forbids  scrimping  and  double- 
dealing,  and  making  the  letter  of  contracts  do  ser- 
vice, instead  of  the  spirit  ?  What  have  we  seen 
lending  refinement,  magnanimity,  noble  outlay  of 
time  and  strength  on  ill-paid  work,  in  irresistible 
witness  against  the  monstrous  profits  made  by  frauds 
on  industry  ?  Simply  the  love  of  doing  things  as 
they  ought  to  be  done.  This  is  civilization  ;  this  is 
liberty,  culture,  progress,  holiness.  For  the  art  of 
finding  one's  special  function  rests  on  a  deeper  art, 
which  helps  to  the  right  fulfillment  of  many,  —  the 
art  of  pursuing  true  and  right  relations  in  every- 
thing ;  the  fruit  of  a  clear  moral  sense,  of  blended 
modesty  and  insight,  of  an  interior  harmony,  as  yet 
most  rare. 

Let  us  educate  for  this  principle.  Let  us  flood 
these  torch-light  politics,  this  pitchy  trade,  these  py- 
rotechnic manners,  with  its  simple,  open  day.  Let  us 
substitute  it  for  the  herded  dependence  and  noisy 
Baal-worship  that  is  called  religion,  and  vindicate  the 
name  that  is  broader  and  more  beautiful  than  Chris- 
tianity itself.  For  this  is  the  prophecy  in  the  strug- 
gling heart  of  humanity  to-day. 

Let  us  cheer  desponding  ones,  who  complain  that 
the  world  has  for  them  no  sphere  and  no  demand, 
to  seek  in  this  free  atmosphere  the  conditions  of  self- 
knowledge, —  to  obey  the  patient  invitation  of  their 
own  souls. 

" '  O  dreary  lift/  we  cry, '  O  dreary  life !  * 
And  still  the  generations  of  the  birds 
Sing  through  our  sighing,  and  the  flocks  and  herds 
Serenely  live  while  we  are  keeping  strife 
With  heaven's  true  purpose  in  us,  as  a  knife 
Against  which  we  may  struggle !  .  .  .  O  thou  God  of  old, 
Grant  me  some  smaller  grace  than  comes  to  these  !  — 
But  so  much  patience  as  a  blade  of  grass 
Grows  by,  contented  through  the  heat  and  cold." 


EQUAL  OPPORTUNITY  FOR  WOMAN. 


Victor  Hugo,  referring  to  the  French  and  Ameri- 
can Revolutions,  said,  in  his  striking  way,  that  as  the 
eighteenth  century  emancipated  man,  so  the  work  of 
the  nineteenth  would  be  the  emancipation  of  woman. 
And  there  is  a  certain  truth  in  this  grand  antithesis. 
But  nature  does  not  finish  off  her  moral  effects  by 
piecemeal,  nor  perfect  a  part  of  humanity  at  a  time. 
And  it  would  be  truer  to  say  that  the  emancipation 
of  man  and  woman  goes  on  as  one  work.  The  eman- 
cipation of  each  can  only  come  in  and  through  that 
of  the  other.  How  can  man  have  found  his  man- 
hood, while  woman  has  not  free  play  for  woman- 
hood ?  And  in  fact  the  new  demand  for  the  suffrage 
shows  him  to  be  subject  to  the  moral  and  mental 
bondage  involved  in  a  false  assumption,  which  of  it- 
self alone  hides  the  truth  of  the  case.  It  is  assumed 
that  man,  as  exclusive  possessor  and  distributer  of 
the  franchise,  may  grant  or  refuse  the  exercise  of  it 
according  to  his  own  judgment  ;  and  to  him  these 
new  claimants  must  make  appeal.  They  have  thus 
the  burden  of  proving  to  his  satisfaction  a  right 
which  in  the  nature  of  things  is  really  as  good  as  his 
own.  It  is  not  creditable  to  us  that  the  question  of 
right  should  have  to  be  discussed  at  all.  The  posi- 
tion is  a  false  one,  and  it  raises  issues  that  are  neither 


260  EQUAL  OPPORTUNITY   FOR  WOMAN. 

necessary  nor  productive  of  that  mutual  sympathy 
and  respect  which  become  the  sexes.  Here  are 
started  apparent  differences  of  interest,  and  opposing 
lines  of  defence,  merely  by  the  fact  that  man  assumes 
to  be  the  final  court  of  appeal  on  a  question  whose 
decision,  upon  his  own  democratic  or  republican  the- 
ory, would  belong  as  much  to  one  sex  as  to  the  other. 
From  these  needless  grounds  of  strife,  he  should 
hasten  to  relieve  it,  by  abandoning  that  assumption. 
Then  it  will  cease  to  be  a  claim  for  "  woman's 
rights,"  and  become  what  it  naturally  and  properly 
is,  a  question  as  to  what  are  woman's  aptitudes  and 
duties. 

Some  women  have  abandoned  petitions  and  gone  to 
recording  their  votes  at  polls  of  their  own.  Why 
should  they  not  ?  If  the  votes  are  not  counted,  it  is 
not  their  fault.  Besides,  the  position  of  petitioners 
involves  the  additional  wrong,  that  their  claims  are 
subjected  to  the  political  method  of  being  granted  or 
refused  according  to  the  numerical  strength  of  the  pe- 
tition. Woman  is  treated  only  as  a  whole  ;  and  so 
those  who  do  desire  to  vote  must  wait  the  indorsement 
of  the  majority  of  the  sex.  Individual  right  becomes 
sacrificed  to  the  method  of  looking  at  each  sex  only 
as  a  whole,  as  having  or  not  having  rights  as  a  whole. 
It  is  as  if  there  were  something  inherently  unbecom- 
ing in  women's  taking  a  part  in  government,  which 
can  only  be  removed  by  the  conversion  of  the  sex,  as 
such^  to  the  desire  of  voting.  Surely  this  is  to  throw 
discredit  on  every  individual  claimant  who  is  thus 
treated ;  she  is  put  on  the  defensive  against  the 
charge  of  forwardness,  at  the  very  moment  when  she 
should  be  heard  with  special  respect,  as  exercising  a 
function  forever  held  sacred,  —  the  choice  of  his  rul- 


EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY  FOR  WOMAN.  261 

ers  by  the  individual  citizen.  Now,  all  this  harsh 
ordeal  to  which  individual  women  are  subjected,  be- 
cause unsupported  by  the  general  voice  of  their  sex, 
however  it  be  excused  or  explained,  goes  on  the  sup- 
position that  it  is  man's  place  to  see  to  it  that  woman 
acts  in  this  matter  only  as  a  whole,  and  to  grant  the 
ballot  only  on  that  condition.  It  is  a  false  position, 
for  which  the  actual  voting  list  will  find  it  a  hard 
matter  and  a  very  ungracious  one  to  render  account. 
The  true  point  for  reflection  is,  not  how  many  wo- 
men do  not  want  the  ballot,  or  how  many  do  want 
it,  but  how  long  is  one  sex  to  vote  itself  the  sole 
depositary  of  the  right  of  personal  representation 
in  a  government  by  the  people,  and  of  determin- 
ing the  conditions  on  which  individuals  of  the  other 
sex  shall  be  admitted  to  it.  It  may  be  true  enough 
that  the  question  of  woman's  best  method  of  influence 
in  politics  is  not  so  simple  as  many  enthusiasts  for 
her  use  of  the  ballot  think  it.  But  certainly  it  seems 
plain  that  these  needless  complexities,  these  causes 
of  recrimination,  these  mischiefs  of  a  false  position, 
should  cease.  Pretensions  of  this  kind  do  not  be- 
come our  civilization.  The  claim  entered  by  even  a 
few  intelligent  women  should  be  enough  to  suggest 
to  the  voter  that  he  has  a  duty  to  fulfill  before  he  un- 
dertakes to  advise  the  other  sex  on  the  subject  of 
voting,  or  even  to  gratify  the  wishes,  or  protect  the 
tastes,  of  the  majority  of  women  by  his  political  ac- 
tion. Ought  the  appeals  of  Lucy  Stone  or  another 
to  be  necessary  to  admonish  him  that  while  he  keeps 
the  word  male  in  the  clauses  about  the  franchise,  he 
is  really  settling  beforehand  a  question  which  it  is  not 
his  province  to  decide  ?  Whatever  it  may  seem  best 
or  wisest  for  women  to  do  as  regards  voting,  it  is 


262  EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY   FOR   WOMAN. 

none  the  less  unjust  for  him  to  exclude  them  by  posi- 
tive law.  I  am  far  from  saying  that  this  word  male 
intends  the  tyranny  that  once  disgraced  our  statutes 
in  the  word  white  ;  but  not  the  less  do  I  say  that  it 
records  a  false  and  unjust  assumption,  and  should  at 
once  disappear.  Then,  and  then  only,  can  we  begin 
fairly  to  understand  what  woman  is  to  gain  or  to  lose 
by  entering  this  new  field  of  labor  and  competition. 
At  present  one  word  to  her  can  put  us  right.  ''  You 
shall  not  ask  me  for  the  privilege  of  voting.  The 
ballot  is  not  mine  to  give.  It  is  yours  to  take." 
The  claims  for  equal  suffrage  are  neither  the  proj- 
ect of  certain  dissatisfied  persons,  nor  an  agitation 
worked  up  by  theorists  against  the  natural  order  of 
things.  They  are  neither  a  mere  "movement"  nor  a 
predetermined  plan.  They  come  in  the  track  of  our 
civilization.  The  demand  is  not  to  be  judged  by  the 
spirit,  the  methods,  nor  even  the  character  of  its  act- 
ual advocates  alone ;  it  has  a  value  beyond  the  best 
they  can  say  for  it,  and  it  will  be  vain  to  rebut  their 
arguments.  For  what  it  really  claims  is  beyond  con- 
futincr ;  it  is  involved  in  all  rational  conversation  and 

CD    ' 

all  mutual  responsibility.  We  shall  mistake  it  al- 
together if  we  think  it  merely  part  of  the  push  for 
universal  suffrage.  It  is  involved  in  the  very  idea  of 
equal  opportunity.  This  path  must  open  to  woman 
simply  because  all  paths  must  open  to  mind  and  will, 
on  like  terms  for  all.  Faculty !  faculty  !  The  whole 
age  is  a  magnet  that  draws  it  forth.  Suppression  is 
pain  and  wrong.  The  future  summons  every  re- 
source. It  is  superficial  to  dwell  on  charges  of  bad 
taste  and  imitation  of  male  habits.  A  few  women 
are  not  moving  for  certain  positions  and  powers. 
What  moves  these  agitators  is  moving  us  all.     What 


EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY  FOR  WOMAN.  263 

if  it  does  seem  easy  of  belief  to  most  people  of  both 
sexes  tlitit  men  are  made  for  managing  affairs  of 
state,  and  that  women  are  not  ?  Does  that  make  it 
less  true  that  refusing  equal  opportunity^  in  its  full 
length  and  breadth,  is  to  reject  the  very  faith  which 
every  step  of  our  social  progress  confesses  to  be  true  ? 
Already  the  wrongs  and  rights  of  labor  and  the 
needs  of  employment  are  so  plain  that  prejudice 
makes  but  feeble  stand  against  women  who  reso- 
lutely undertake  any  new  form  of  trade  or  profes- 
sion. Outbreaks  of  opposition  tell  for  their  cause  at 
once,  and  prove  it  irresistible.  Educational  oppor- 
f unity  is  rapidly  advancing  ;  college-training  for  wo- 
men will  not  be  long  to  seek  in  any  part  of  our  coun- 
try. Universities  are  springing  up,  especially  at  the 
West,  where  the  sexes  have  the  same  opportunities. 
In  the  most  enlightened  parts  of  the  Union  but  few 
changes  remain  to  be  made  in  the  laws  of  property  to 
secure  equality  of  the  sexes  in  the  possession  and  dis- 
posal of  it.  Why  should  the  hinges  of  the  political 
gates  grate  hard?  Even  if  there  are  reasons  that  ex- 
plain this  reluctance  not  discreditably,  if  both  sexes 
agree  that  woman's  organization  better  fits  her  for 
other  than  political  methods  and  functions,  what 
would  this  signify,  except  that  it  is  precisely  this 
point  at  which  fair  opportunity  for  the  individual 
should  be  especially  guarded,  since  here  it  would  be 
most  likely  to  be  lost  sight  of  in  the  general  distaste 
for  its  exercise  ?  Arguments  from  taste,  from  chival- 
rous protection,  from  fear  lest  woman's  peculiar  func- 
tions should  receive  detriment,  are  as  irrelevant  here 
as  in  the  question  of  freedom  to  labor.  They  do  not 
touch  the  right  to  opportunity  at  all.  When  women 
have  misused  this  right,  it  will  be  time  enough  to  in- 


264  EQUAL  OPPORTUNITY  FOR   WOMAN. 

teifere  for  the  protection  of  womanly  functions  ;  and 
in  this,  true  conservatism  their  own  sex,  as  most  inter- 
ested, will  assuredly  be  found  quite  as  quick  and  sen- 
sitive as  the  other.  Certainly  to  presume  inability 
before  trial  is  an  outrage.  One  sex  cannot  determine 
this  question  for  the  other.  I  am  not  discussing  the 
question  whether  woman,  as  a  sex,  does  not  regard 
the  present  state  of  things  as  an  exemption  rather 
than  an  exclusion  ;  nor  whether,  in  fact,  to  be  outside 
of  politics  is  not  a  vantage  rather  than  a  loss  ;  nor 
whether  altering  the  political  status  of  all  women, 
because  a  few  demand  the  change,  is  withdrawing 
from  the  sex  itself  a  certain  protection  in  the  law  for 
other  functions  of  more  moment  to  her  than  the  bal- 
lot. These  are  simply  questions  that  point  to  future 
arrangements  in  the  matter  of  voting,  in  which  wo- 
man herself  must  have  her  free  voice.  But  they  do 
not  touch  the  first  duty  of  removing  disabilities  and 
abandoning  that  exclusive  jurisdiction  which  has 
been  hitherto  assumed.  The  way  to  the  duty  of  all 
will  be  clear  only  when  all  are  free.  Whatever  the 
difficulties  before  us,  the  one  thing  to  be  remembered 
is  that  equal  opportunity  does  not  regard  sex ;  that 
liberty  knows,  like  faith  and  charity,  neither  male 
nor  female.  Organic  differences  between  the  sexes 
may  make  it  wiser  on  the  whole  for  most  women  to 
take  less  active  part  in  political  movement  than  men. 
However  this  may  be,  it  cannot  be  well  that  they 
should  he  forbidden  one  inch  of  the  path  that  teaches 
political  duty.  Are  wifehood,  maternity,  home,  to 
suffer  by  this  freedom?  But  how  can  these  be 
rightly  valued  or  used  for  their  human  uses  so  long 
as  woman  is  barred  out  from  practical  experience  of 
the  public  interests  ?     Do  not  all  these  functions  of 


EQUAL  OPPORTUNITY  FOR   WOMAN.  265 

hers  terminate  in  government,  institutions,  social  re- 
lations ?  Must  not  the  insignificant  political  position 
of  the  wife,  by  exclusive  laws  which  he  has  made, 
tell  upon  the  political  capacities  of  the  husband  ? 
Can  his  legislation  be  noble,  while  he  cages  himself 
within  it,  and  her  without  it,  lest  her  mind  and  heart 
should  dream  themselves  fit  to  walk  with  him  in 
those  broad  fields  of  service  ?  Is  wifehood  in  this 
situation  the  help  and  strength  it  should  be  in  the 
growth  of  public  and  private  virtue ;  in  making  social 
manhood  and  republican  self-government  ?  Or  how 
is  it  with  the  true  ideal  of  maternity?  There  is  a 
feminine  element  in  every  man,  that  is  imparted  at 
his  birth;  it  should  bring  moral  refinement  and  spir- 
itual power  into  his  world  of  competitions,  of  appeals 
to  numbers  and  strength.  But  its  character  depends 
on  what  the  mother  is,  who  implants  it  from  her 
own  life.  Is  it  the  true  ideal  of  motherhood  that  this 
fine  element  in  the  child,  that  turns  him  away  from 
the  love  of  appealing  to  force,  should  come  from  her, 
as  a  spirit  of  weakness  and  self-distrust,  shrinking 
from  great  public  interests  and  responsibilities,  sub- 
servient to  petty  passions  and  prescribed  exclusions  ? 
Is  not  a  great  sense  of  amplest  opportunity  necessary 
for  the  function  of  maternity,  if  we  would  not  have 
the  finer  instincts  of  the  generations  learn  to  leave 
politics  to  the  baser  ones,  and  die  away  into  senti- 
mental dreams  of  a  virtue  it  dares  not  put  into  laws  ? 
Or  is  it  the  ideal  of  home  relations  that  the  sphere 
from  which  all  public  virtue  must  spread  should  lack 
that  freedom  and  breadth  of  intercourse  on  public 
affairs  which  only  a  common,  direct,  personal  interest 
can  give,  so  that  even  the  functions  supposed  to  be 
peculiarly  feminine  cannot  be  fulfilled  without,  I  do 


266  EQUAL    OPPORTUNITY    FOR   WOMAN. 

not  say,  every  woman's  voting,  but  without  every 
woman's  fair  chance  to  join  man  in  political  action 
on  equal  terms,  if  she  will  ?  There  is  not  one  high- 
way or  by-path,  in  the  realm  of  self-government, 
which  man  may  tread,  where  woman  must  not  have 
equal  opportunity  to  stand  beside  him,  if  wifehood, 
maternity,  or  home  culture  is  to  become  an  intelli- 
gent and  ennobling  element  in  our  civilization  as  a 
whole. 

Our  civilization  educates  man  by  actual  participa- 
tion in  all  these  functions,  which  he  is  competent  to 
learn  and  fulfill.  Not  for  worlds  would  the  American 
abandon  his  claim  to  this  direct  contact  and  practi- 
cal discipline.  I  think  the  power  of  the  ballot  as  an 
element  of  culture  is  apt  to  be  exaggerated,  for  the 
ballot  appeals  to  the  majority;  ar^d  I  hold  that  finer 
forces,  counteractive  of  the  coarseness  of  the  appeal 
to  mere  numbers  and  mass,  have  always  come,  and 
are  still  to  come,  from  outside  of  this  special  symbol 
of  his  democratic  equality.  But  would  not  he  regard 
his  education  as  an  insult  and  a  farce,  but  for  the 
admission  the  ballot  gives  him  to  handle  every  tool 
of  that  fine  art  of  government  to  which  it  points  ? 
Would  his  moral  poAver  gain  by  exclusion  from  it  ? 
Is  it  to  be  supposed  that  woman  can  remain  in  the 
position  of  a  looker-on  in  this  great  school  of  cul- 
tures ?  How  she  can  best  improve  its  spheres,  or 
reach  a  fuller  symmetry  through  its  many-sided  rela- 
tions, how  she  shall  turn  this  political  life  which  is 
now  but  a  human  hemisphere  into  a  human  worlds 
from  a  half  life  to  a  whole  life,  is  not  yet  possible  to 
determine  ;  but  to  suppose  she  can  remain  indiffer- 
ent or  hostile  to  the  removal  of  restraints  on  her  free- 
dom to  do  this  is  to  imagine  her  the  inferior  half  of 


EQUAL  OPPORTUNITY  FOR  WOMAN.  267 

creation  that  dead  and  dying  creeds  of  the  past  have 
pronounced  her.  Can  there  be  open  access  to  litera- 
ture, science,  conversation,  social  intercourse;  can 
steam  and  lightning,  war  and  peace,  can  newspaper 
and  school,  carry  home  every  throb  of  the  world's 
life  to  every  civilized  household ;  can  every  stir  of  its 
pain  and  its  promise  thrill  society  to  its  fibres'  ends, 
and  woman  be  content  with  the  prescribed  function  of 
gazing  at  rule  and  misrule,  the  strife  of  right  and 
wrong,  the  half  life  that  wastes  opportunity  and  bru- 
talizes power,  content  to  gaze  at  these  through  gates 
she  may  not  pass  ?  That  she  will  generally  use  the 
ballot  I  do  not  affirm  ;  but  that  she  will  open  the 
path  to  it,  to  be  used  as  her  sense  of  duty  prescribes, 
is  involved  in  the  whole  current  of  our  civilization, 
and  in  the  self-respect  that  secures  her  moral  power 
in  politics  or  out  of  it.  It  is  through  their  sym- 
pathy with  the  best  opportunities  of  the  age  that  so 
many  of  the  most  enlightened  and  refined  women  of 
England  and  America  are  found  advocates  of  equal 
suffrage.  I  do  not  say  that  it  is  to  the  discredit  of 
others  that  they  do  not  desire  the  ballot,  that  they 
feel  their  own  chosen  and  ample  work  can  be  better 
fulfilled  without  the  interference  of  this  new  func- 
tion ;  but  a  just  claim,  bringing  opportunity,  culture, 
humanity,  and  lessons  of  the  time  to  back  it  in  the 
persons  of  the  claimants,  should  none  the  less  be  ad- 
mitted. If  the  scruples  and  objections  above  men- 
tioned are  really  womanly^  if  they  do  point  to  a  com- 
mon need  of  the  sex  and  come  from  a  high  personal 
experience,  they  will  infalhbly  command  respect; 
they  will  constitute  a  moral  force  which  will  surely 
make  itself  felt  and  tell  upon  those  who  are  more 
eager  for  the  excitement  of  political  life  than  for 
their  personal  and  private  duties. 


268  EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY  FOR   WOMAN. 

But,  leaving  aside  the  question  of  abstract  and 
real  right,  it  is  asked,  Did  not  woman  substantially 
choose  her  present  relations  to  politics  ?  Did  they 
not  grow  out  of  her  natural  fitnesses,  rather  than 
come  by  the  injustice  of  man  ?  Is  not  this  state  of 
the  law  itself  the  record  of  her  own  desire  to  trans- 
fer or  lease  to  him  the  charge  of  government?  They 
who  ask  these  questions  will  find  them  answered 
in  the  whole  history  of  the  old  English  common 
law,  and  the  still  older  canon  law,  the  statutes  of 
the  Church.  In  these,  woman  is  practically  and  the- 
oretically a  slave,  merged  in  her  husband,  merged 
in  the  authority  of  a  priesthood  to  which  she  is 
not  admitted,  even  more  utterly  incapable  than  in 
the  old  law  codes  of  the  East.  Paul  and  Moses 
alike  remand  her  to  subjection.  The  Roman  law 
began  the  process  of  her  emancipation  from  positive 
servitude  to  parents,  husbands,  and  step  by  step  it 
is  moving  on  to  perfection.  Political  disabilities, 
yet  to  be  removed,  are  a  part  of  this  old  status  of 
subjection,  originating  in  a  variety  of  causes,  but  al- 
ways making  the  free  expression  of  woman's  real 
desire  impossible. 

But  then  this  also  is  not  less  to  be  noted,  —  that 
civilization  has  now  brought  the  political  power,  in 
the  most  enlightened  parts  of  this  country  at  least,  to 
the  point  of  asking  what  her  desire  really  is.  It  is  not 
true  that  she  is  left  out  of  political  life  from  the  pres- 
ent wish  to  do  her  injustice;  on  the  whole,  the  feel- 
ing, if  it  were  analyzed,  would  be  found  to  be  rather 
that  of  defending  her  right  of  exemption,  relieving 
her  from  tasks  she  does  not  desire.  And  just  so  soon 
as  she  indicates  her  pleasure  to  use  the  ballot  she  will 
have  it.   I  have  said  I  do  not  think  politics  should  wait 


EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY  FOR  WOMAN.  269 

for  this  free  expression  ;  the  monopoly  that  stands  in 
the  way  of  it  should  not  stand  one  hour.  But  it  is 
none  the  less  true  to  say  even  this :  that  among  in- 
telligent men,  at  least,  actual  delay  to  wipe  out  the 
anomaly  of  the  voting  rule  is  not  so  much  owing  to 
a  spirit  of  domination  or  contempt,  as  is  too  apt  to  be 
assumed,  as  it  is  to  a  respect  for  vs^hat  woman  has 
made  of  the  functions  she  has  hitherto  filled,  and  the 
belief  that  she  holds  herself  entitled  to  be  left  free  to 
work  through  them  alone.  If  it  had  not  this  pallia- 
tion, the  present  state  of  law  would  prove  its  makers 
fit  for  nothing  but  to  be  deprived  of  self-government ' 
altogether ;  and  we  must  look  for  the  causes  of  this 
feeling  in  long  -  established  traditional  associations, 
into  which  inquiry  has  never  till  now  been  earnestly 
made. 

Thus  there  is  a  great  deal  of  traditional  acquies- 
cence in  supposed  inherent  differences  between  the 
sexes,  about  which  comparatively  little  is  really 
known.  Much  of  the  talk  about  them  is  senti- 
mental and  purely  conventional,  mere  appeal  to  the 
prescribed  limits  of  action  which  it  has  been  held 
indecorum  and  sacrilege  to  attempt  to  pass.  Male 
and  female  do  not  mean  the  same  thing ;  differ- 
ences in  physical  structure  involve  and  imply  psy- 
chological differences.  But  how  shall  the  limits  of 
these  differences  be  determined,  until  full  opportunity 
for  culture  is  afforded  ?  It  would,  indeed,  be  equally 
wrong  to  affirm  that  we  have  no  data  as  yet  to  go 
upon.  Women  have  been  tried  in  many  fields  of 
thought  and  work  now  mainly  or  exclusively  limited 
to  man.  Indeed,  there  is  scarcely  one  to  which  they 
have  not  found  access,  at  one  time  or  another,  in 
Greece,  in  India,  in  modern  France.    Herodotus  even 


270  EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY  FOR  WOMAN. 

tells  us  that  in  Egypt  the  man  did  house- work,  and 
the  woman  managed  business,  and  that  the  husband 
took  a  vow  to  obey  his  wife.  Yet  it  is  certain  that 
partial  trials,  under  imperfect  civilization,  have  not 
greatly  enlightened  us  as  to  the  ''  inherent  differ- 
ences "  in  question.  For  must  not  politics,  business, 
finance,  first  be  wisely  apprehended,  and  got  into 
something  like  right  relations  with  universal  uses, 
before  anything  like  a  true  theory  can  he  formed  of 
woman's  relations  to  them,  or,  for  that  matter,  of 
man's,  either  ?  Thus  far,  certainly,  we  cannot  claim 
to  have  arrived  at  their  ideal  meaning.  But  let  me 
call  attention  to  one  very  significant  admission.  Sin- 
gularly enough,  woman  always  held  the  place  of  pre- 
siding divinity  in  those  parts  of  man's  mythology 
which  relate  to  intellect  and  politics.  They  who 
have  refused  to  open  the  common  paths  of  those 
spheres  to  women  have  filled  their  thrones  with 
goddesses.  Thus  Saraswati,  the  wife  of  Brahma,  is 
the  Hindu  deity  of  literature,  science,  and  culture  of 
every  kind.  Hebrew  wisdom,  representing  a  theo- 
cratic union  of  religion  and  politics,  is  personified  as 
a  female.  Athena  is  the  wise  guardian  of  Greek 
liberty,  queen  of  laws  and  justice.  Minerva  holds 
the  same  rank  in  Roman  faith.  Numa  receives  his 
laws  from  the  nymph  Egeria,  and  so  on.  As  Hebrew 
tradition  ascribed  the  fall  of  the  race  to  a  woman,  so 
the  Christian  Church,  with  like  one-sidedness,  declares 
its  sole  saviour  to  be  a  man,  though  with  a  kingdom 
not  of  this  world.  But  it  has  learned  to  do  better 
justice  to  woman,  at  least  in  theory,  than  these  dog- 
mas would  properly  imply.  It  has  not  failed  to  give 
the  feminine  form  to  all  its  personifications  of  Liberty, 
Justice,  Law.     It  has  inconsistently  enough  claimed 


EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY  FOR  WOMAN.  271 

the  actual  field  and  sway  for  man ;  but  the  word  for 
its  ideal  has  always  been  not  He,  but  She.  Civiliza- 
tion stamps  the  head  of  woman  on  its  coins  as  liberty, 
and  lifts  her  form  in  marble  on  its  temples  of  legisla- 
tion. Even  the  French  Revolution,  breaking  away 
from  every  other  tradition,  held  fast  to  this  intuition, 
presentiment,  or  whatever  it  be,  of  mankind,  and 
crowned,  not  a  man,  but  a  maid,  as  symbol  of  reason 
and  of  rule.  Does  he  think  coin  and  pedestal  and 
symbolic  homage  are  forever  to  satisfy  living  brains 
and  hearts  and  hands  ?  Is  not  the  contrast  between 
such  confession  and  the  actual  laws  which  determine 
woman's  share  in  government  —  the  contrast  between 
ideal  and  practice  —  enough  to  indicate  that  it  is  idle 
to  talk  of  data  for  deciding  what  woman  may  or  may 
not  do  in  this  sphere  ?  What  shall  we  say  of  a 
sphere  whose  acknowledged  presiding  genius  is  not 
admitted  to  a  voice  in  its  regulations !  Is  it  not  plain 
enough  that  many  old  formulas,  still  plied  to  satiety, 
about  woman's  nature  and  sphere,  will  by  and  by  be 
regarded  as  those  fine  scribblings,  over  maps  of  the 
sky,  that  passed  for  astronomy  before  the  discovery 
of  the  actual  laws  of  celestial  motion  ? 

America,  it  is  thought,  yields  positive  knowledge 
at  last.  And  platform  and  newspaper  abound  with 
new-fledged  anatomists  of  the  female  mind.  We  are 
treated  to  the  secrets  of  private  experience  blown  out 
into  general  rules,  to  fulsome  praise,  and  morbid  con- 
tempt, or  vulgar  slander,  in  the  name  of  Bible  revela- 
tion. We  are  promised  everything  here,  forewarned 
of  everything  there.  We  are  reproached  with  shut- 
ting out  angels ;  we  are  charged  not  to  open  tbe  doors 
to  maniacs  or  fools.  America  will  be  wiser  in  all  this 
matter  when  she  has  done  her  first  duty,  and  opened 


272  EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY   FOR   WOMAN. 

all  spheres  to  woman  with  cordial  welcome.  At  pres- 
ent the  more  thoughtful  will  modestly  wait  clearer 
light  about  woman's  nature,  and  venture  little  in  the 
way  of  theory.  Generations  bearing  down  the  fruits 
of  equal  culture  are  needed  for  the  data  we  desire. 

Yet  to  doubt  that  history  has  brought  out  many  of 
the  special  characteristics  of  either  sex  into  clear  light 
would  be  folly.  Mr.  Mill,  with  others,  has  called  at- 
tention to  the  curious  fact  that  it  is  precisely  in  those 
points  where  women  have  shown  decided  capacity 
that  they  have  most  prejudice  to  contend  against. 
No  one  thinks  of  forbidding  a  woman  to  write  poems 
or  philosophies,  to  compose  music,  to  paint,  or  to 
carve,  while  it  is  very  certain  there  has  never  been 
a  female  Shakespeare,  or  Plato,  or  Beethoven,  or 
Raphael,  or  Michael  Angelo.  Yet  from  the  queen 
regents  of  the  old  Hindu  states  to  those  empresses 
of  the  East  and  the  West,  Zenobia  and  Victorina, 
who  divided  the  world  between  them  in  the  third 
century  of  the  Christian  era,  and  thence  down  to 
Elizabeth  and  Maria  Theresa,  woman  has  shown  be- 
yond all  question  a  capacity  for  government  fully 
equal  to  that  of  man ;  at  least  as  large  a  proportion 
of  queens  have  governed  wisely  as  of  kings ;  and  if 
queens  have  governed  through  the  aid  of  male  coun- 
selors, have  not  the  wisest  as  well  as  the  weakest 
kings  followed  counsels  of  women  skillful  in  state- 
craft and  fond  of  sway  ?  The  skill  now  manifested 
by  women  in  the  organization  and  management  of 
benevolent  associations,  from  the  great  Sanitary  Com- 
mission down,  is  nowise  inferior  to  man's,  and  would 
be  as  natural  a  gift  for  political  uses,  though  under 
different  conditions  that  may  not  be  found  so  favor- 
able to  its  higher  qualities.     Whether  the  directness 


EQUAL  OPPORTUNITY   FOR   WOMAN.  273 

of  feminine  perceptions  is  not  the  very  thing  needed 
to  scatter  the  complexity,  circumlocution,  and  red 
tape  in  which  the  political  industry  of  man  has  in- 
volved affairs  is  yet  to  be  seen.  And  certainly,  if  the 
special  abilities  of  a  whole  sex  have  been  hitherto  ex- 
cluded from  politics  because  they  are  moral  abilities 
rather  than  what  is  called  logical  or  practical,  the 
time  has  now  come  when  this  cause  alone  should 
fling  open  the  doors,  and  these  moral  powers  be  bid 
to  enter  in  God's  name  and  help  us  all  they  can. 

In  America  the  masculine  energies  have  sprung 
forth,  at  last,  uncontrolled,  with  boundless  desires 
and  boundless  resource.  Man  has  thrown  off  the 
Old  World  compressions  that  served  some  good 
purposes  of  restraining  discipline  in  his  immature- 
stages  of  progress.  He  has  flung  himself  out  upon 
the  idea  of  freedom  and  the  authority  of  human  na- 
ture to  follow  its  own  developing  laws  and  forces, 
and  let  all  its  best  capacities  be  heard  and  obeyed. 
So  far  he  has  listened  mainly  to  ambitions  that,  by 
his  own  admissions,  exclude  the  feminine  element ; 
and  the  present  political  world,  wherein  he  seeks  for 
faithful  men  as  Abraham  counted  them  up  in  Sodom, 
is  the  result.  Intent  on  infinite  ambitions  that  run 
out  beyond  the  nearer  duties,  he  has  had  no  resort 
but  to  keep  these  swathed  and  inert  with  complex 
interests  and  methods,  till  his  laws  defy  codification, 
and  the  plainest  instincts  of  justice  and  humanity 
find  them  a  thicket  of  delays. 

Will  not  woman  help  remedy  this  state  of  things, 
both  by  the  greater  intensity  of  her  emotional  na- 
ture, and  by  her  concentration  on  what  is  nearest  at 
hand  ?  How  much,  on  the  other  hand,  will  a  love  of 
intrigue,  at  least  quite  equal  to  man's,  counteract  this 

18 


274  EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY    FOR   WOMAN. 

turn  for  simpler  and  directer  action  ?  And  will  not 
man's  tolerance  have  to  grow  larger  to  offset  her 
extreme  religious  susceptibility  and  zeal,  and  swift 
and  summary  dealing  with  tlie  complex  problems  of 
practical  freedom  and  duty,  when  it  comes  to  take  in 
hand  the  making  of  the  laws  ?  All  these  and  the  like 
questions  of  action  and  reaction  time  only  can  an- 
swer. But  if  history  has  any  record,  it  is  that  the 
finer  moral  and  aesthetic  forces  in  society  have  al- 
ways been  measurable  by  the  degree  in  which  woman 
has  been  respected  and  set  free  to  follow  her  own 
instincts  of  culture  and  use.  And  so  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that,  while  the  debate  is  going  on  as  to  whether  wo- 
men desire  to  use  the  ballot,  that  question  may  be 
resolving  itself  into  another,  as  the  first  consequence 
of  the  prospect  of  her  desiring  it,  namely,  whether 
the  ballot  itself  is,  in  a  moral  aspect,  what  real  civili- 
zation requires  that  it  should  be.  The  demand  for 
equal  suffrage  is  a  reminder  that  the  polls  be  fitted 
for  the  presence  of  the  new-comer.  Let  those  sta- 
bles, it  says,  be  cleansed.  Let  mutual  respect  and 
the  amenities  of  life  have  the  floor  there.  Let  the 
political  press  learn  to  cultivate  decency  and  good 
manners,  and  to  avoid  personal  slander  and  abuse. 
Let  bear-gardens  give  way  to  conferences  where  the 
serious  interests  of  the  subject  shall  be  reflected  in 
the  becoming  conversation  of  those  who  shall  discuss 
it. 

Here  I  touch  on  what  I  regard  as  the  most  impor- 
tant bearing  of  the  subject  of  woman's  suffrage  upon 
the  present  and  future.  Leaving  aside  the  unques- 
tionable injustice  of  her  compulsory  exclusion  from 
the  polls,  it  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  there  was 
involved  in  her  position  outside  of  politics  a  certain 


EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY   FOR   WOMAN.  275 

independence  of  its  party  interests  and  crude  passions, 
which  gave  peculiar  play  to  her  moral  power,  wher- 
ever she  has  chosen  to  exert  it,  in  counteracting  the 
worst  features  of  our  political  system,  —  the  brute 
force  of  mere  majorities,  the  pushing  and  driving  of 
men  into  masses,  on  one  side  or  the  other,  under  the 
sheer  force  of  mass  over  personal  conviction  or  will ; 
the  contempt  of  minorities,  the  swamping  of  individ- 
ual conscience  in  immediate  policy,  the  overwhelm- 
ing despotism  of  drill.  All  this  mechanism  of  politics 
needed  counterbalancing  by  moral  forces  not  subject 
to  its  logic  of  necessity,  nor  its  passion  for  success. 
There  was  always  some  sense  of  guardianship  and 
relief  in  noting  outside  of  it  all  the  proofs  which  no 
thoughtful  man  could  ignore,  in  this  influence  of  the 
truest  women,  that  the  deepest  and  best  power  was 
after  all  personal,  individual,  not  dependent  on  the 
roll-call  or  the  fugleman,  not  driven  in  the  harness 
by  party  alternatives,  nor  stained  with  enforced  com- 
promise or  the  suspicion  even  of  political  ambition. 

In  this  point  of  view  there  was  a  vantage  in  woman's 
position  as  a  non-voter,  which  was  illustrated  in  her 
immense  influence  in  holding  the  political  world  to  a 
great  duty  in  the  whole  Anti-Slavery  struggle ;  an  in- 
fluence which  I  believe  would  have  been  greatly  les- 
sened, had  she  acted  from  within  the  parties  instead 
of  from  without  them.  And  I  am  fully  convinced 
that  in  a  true  republican  State  there  will  always  be 
a  necessity  for  such  form  of  personal  influence,  ex- 
erted from  a  position,  voluntarily  assumed,  of  course, 
if  not  outside  of  political  action  altogether,  yet  out- 
side of  all  suspicion  of  pursuing  or  expectation  of  pos- 
sessing other  opportunities  of  influence  than  those 
which  are  purely  intellectual  and  moral.     If  now  the 


276  EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY   FOR  WOMAN. 

very  force  of  civilization  itself  is  compelling  woman 
to  leave  this  point  of  vantage ;  if  she  whose  purely 
moral  power  has  proved  itself  a  great  fountain  of  no- 
ble practical  reform  is  to  be  transferred  into  spheres 
where  a  lower  force  has  ruled,  and  the  appeal  to 
numbers  is  the  sovereign  law,  I  do  not  deny  that 
this  untried  path  has  its  difficulties  and  its  apparent 
disadvantages.  It  has  had  its  perils  for  man ;  it  will 
have  them  for  woman,  as  real,  if  of  a  different  kind. 
I  think  I  am  more  impressed  by  the  sense  of  a  cer- 
tain loss  the  best  women  will  incur  in  this  direction 
than  most  of  those  with  whom  I  converse  about  it. 
But  these  difficulties  do  not  shake  my  faith  in  the 
leading  of  our  civilization,  in  the  clear  demands  of 
justice,  in  the  compensations  of  these  new  sympathies 
and  relations,  in  the  opportunities  of  liberty  thus 
opened  to  the  citizen  of  either  sex.  Two  of  these 
opportunities  especially  interest  me.  One  I  have  al- 
ready referred  to.  If  woman  enters  politics,  then 
politics  cannot  stay  as  they  have  been.  Both  their 
method  and  their  purpose  must  change.  For  the 
new  element  cannot  fail  to  bring  with  it  much  of 
that  peculiar  form  of  influence  which  it  has  hitherto 
exerted  ;  an  influence  altogether  independent  of  ma- 
jorities, nowise  compulsory,  purely  personal ;  an  in- 
fluence that  has  been  wont  to  move  men,  and  will 
not  fail,  in  these  new  relations,  to  move  them 
through  their  respect  for  other  sanctions  than  those 
of  either  numbers  or  force.  The  immediate  presence 
and  action  of  women  must  constantly  suggest  this 
appeal  from  the  tyranny  of  numbers  to  finer  forces 
of  persuasion  and  private  judgment ;  for  it  is  by 
these  alone  that  womarCs  organization  fits  her  to  gov- 
ern.    1  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  I  expect  this 


EQUAL  OPPORTUNITY   FOR  WOMAN.  277 

power  to  be  always  nobly  used  by  individual  women, 
who  will  differ,  as  men  differ,  in  the  quality  of  their 
political  conduct;  but  I  believe  that  wherever  the 
feminine  element  enters  even  as  a  rights  exercised  or 
not,  its  natural  associations  with  influences  more  in- 
terior and  noble  than  mere  physical  force  and  mate- 
rial energy  must  accompany  it.  So  far,  then,  in  the 
present  state  of  political  life,  it  must  be  helpful  and 
humanizing.  Not  war,  not  intemperance,  nor  penal 
methods  will  show  this  special  good  influence  from 
woman  so  much  as  the  whole  prevailing  theory  of 
politics,  as  a  mere  way  of  appealing  to  men  in  the 
mass.  It  is  to  be  considered,  too,  that  this  peculiar 
aptitude  and  destination,  as  it  were,  to  influence 
through  personal  and  interior  forces,  rather  than 
through  outward  combinations  and  masses,  is  not  a 
thing  to  he  put  aivay  by  the  new  claims  of  the  ballot. 
The  ardent  zeal  of  advocates  for  equal  suffrage  may 
incline  to  disparage  its  right  to  keep  women  from  the 
political  field,  but  it  will  not  be  set  aside.  It  is  too 
deeply  wrought  into  the  structural  individuality  of 
the  sex,  whose  central  function,  though  by  no  means 
the  only  one,  is  motherhood.  It  inheres  in  the  spir- 
itual guardianship,  committed  to  her  by  nature,  of 
sanctities  which  enforce  a  certain  concentration  on 
the  inward  life  of  sentiment,  and  demand  a  certain 
liberty  to  find  shelter  and  privacy.  Exceptions  only 
prove  the  rule  here.  It  will  make  itself  respected. 
The  natural  reluctance  of  a  large  class  of  women  to 
engage  actively  in  political  personalities,  party  ma- 
chinery, and  competition  for  office  will  have  to  be 
respected.  The  devotion,  of  such  as  are  already 
amply  occupied,  to  domestic  or  other  cares  that  in- 
terest and  satisfy  them  will   have  to  be  respected. 


278  EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY   FOR   WOMAN. 

The  zeal  aforesaid  will  accomplish  nothing  by  taunt- 
ing this  devotion  with  obtuseness  and  indifference  to 
public  duty.  Rights  like  these  will  be  maintained 
against  the  reactions  of  politics  and  the  drum-beat  of 
special  agitators.  The  right  of  not  being  interfered 
with  by  the  claims  of  the  party  canvass,  of  standing 
outside  of  the  personal  strifes  that  great  public  ques- 
tions concentrate  at  the  polls,  will  have  to  be  re- 
spected in  the  new  class  of  voters,  as  they  never  have 
been  in  the  other  sex.  A  degree  of  personal  liberty, 
in  respect  of  choosing  or  not  choosing  political  action 
at  special  occasions,  will  thus  find  admission  to  the 
political  world,  which  has  hitherto  treated  such  inde- 
pendence with  contempt,  and  branded  it  as  the  un- 
pardonable sin  in  politics,  from  whatever  motive  it 
has  been  assumed.  Thus  when  voters  cannot  be 
dragooned  to  the  polls  to  vote  for  the  lesser  of  two 
evils,  for  the  one  or  the  other  of  two  unprincipled 
candidates,  a  better  day  will  dawn  on  political  mo- 
rality. In  the  independence,  then,  w^hich  woman's 
natural  liberties  will  bring  into  these  spheres,  I  look 
for  an  abatement  of  the  prevailing  idolatry  of  the 
ballot ;  the  better  understanding  that  it  is  not  the 
end,  but  the  means  to  an  end  beyond  itself,  in  great 
moralities  that  alone  justify  the  use  of  it.  I  hope 
it  will  open  the  way  for  suggesting  higher  sanctions 
and  standards  of  political  justice  than  the  will  of  ma- 
jorities, or  even  the  will  of  the  people  ;  that  it  will 
help  lift  into  view  not  only  the  rights  of  minorities, 
which  the  worship  of  numbers  slurs,  but  the  sacred- 
ness  of  personal  conviction,  —  the  first  duty  of  each 
to  obey  that,  whether  he  can  make  a  show  of  hands 
for  it,  or  must  stand  alone  for  it  against  all  parties. 
In  a  word,  I  hope  help  will  come  hereby  towards  dis- 


EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY   FOR   WOMAN.  279 

covering  the  true  practical  foundations  of  tbe  State  ; 
light  on  the  great  problem,  as  yet  unsolved,  with  all 
our  pretense  of  a  perfect  theory  of  liberty  how  to  get 
at  the  expression  of  the  highest  moral  sense  that  ex- 
ists in  the  community,  the  ide^  fittest  to  help  and  to 
guide,  and  to  get  that  embodied  in  institutions  and 
laws.  And  what  division  of  labor,  what  speciality 
of  function,  are  yet  to  be  found  conducive  to  this  end, 
only  such  freedom  can  reveal.  In  what  I  have  here 
said,  therefore,  of  the  independence  woman  may  as- 
sert, in  relation  to  political  action,  I  do  not  mean  to 
treat  lightly  her  coming  opportunity  for  clearer  in- 
sight into  the  public  interests,  and  the  larger  fields 
of  service  that  invite  her.  The  value  of  enlarging 
the  narrow  spheres  in  which  thousands  of  women 
move ;  of  substituting  great  common  ideas  and  aims 
for  the  petty  intrigues,  jealousies,  rivalries  about 
trifles,  that  consume  their  hearts  and  heads,  simply 
because  they  have  not  that  free  open  air  of  the  gen- 
eral life  which  men  are  breathing  all  the  time,  it  is 
not  easy  to  overestimate.  This  is  especially  true  of 
the  passion  for  personal  ornament  and  display  —  that 
barbarism  of  civilized  life  —  that  exhausts  the  purse 
as  much  as  it  animalizes  the  tastes,  signalizing  the 
commencement  of  its  bondage,  as  the  old  Hebrew 
slaves  did  when  they  desired  to  remain  slaves  for  life 
instead  of  going  out  at  the  year  of  jubilee,  by  having 
an  awl  run  through  the  ear. 

How  much  nobler  life  is  opening  for  woman  in 
every  direction,  in  opportunities  to  relieve  the  degra- 
dations and  disqualifications  with  which  female  labor 
has  been  burdened  I  Every  woman  who  bravely  en- 
ters a  profession  or  trade,  not  hitherto  recognized  as 
feminine,  and  does  herself  credit,  or  who  claims  and 
wins  the  better  wages  hitherto  refused  her  sex  in  any 


280  EQUAL   OPPORTUNITY   FOR   WOMAN. 

form  of  work,  is  expanding  the  mental  and  moral  life 
of  her  whole  sex,  down  to  its  lowest  forms  of  debase- 
ment, and  every  new  step  in  legislation  and  humanity 
is  a  proof  that  her  work  is  telling  fast.  Her  political 
recognition  will  crown  all  other  opportunities,  not 
because  it  will  make  women  vote,  but  because  it  will 
show  that  they  are  held  equal  members  of  the  State 
with  men,  in  all  the  forms  of  its  universal  life.  It 
will  give  them  that  practical  respect  and  furtherance 
in  every  individual  effort  and  aspiration  which  the 
full  right  of  citizenship  carries  with  it.  It  will  give 
politics  itself  a  dignity  and  value  in  their  sight,  and 
reveal  to  them  its  real  dependence  on  their  intelli- 
gent interest  and  their  moral  power.  It  is  for  rea- 
sons like  these  that  thoughtful  women,  looking  along 
the  coming  track  of  our  American  destiny,  have  felt 
that  the  idea  of  equal  suffrage  deserves  the  welcome 
of  their  sex.  Not  because  the  ballot  will  be  to  them 
emancipation  from  oppressions,  nor  because  there  is 
any  general  wish  or  purpose  to  withhold  their  rights  ; 
not  because  they  cannot,  outside  of  politics,  move  leg- 
islation to  secure  them  everything  their  own  votes 
would  bring,  nor  in  order  that  they  may  act  in  a 
body,  as  one  sex,  for  their  own  interests,  as  distinct 
from  the  other,  nor  because  women  would  necessarily 
act  for  their  own  interests  and  good  any  more  than 
men  have,  through  these  years  of  slavery,  war,  and 
other  wasteful  and  ruinous  ways,  acted  for  theirs ; 
but  because  it  is  essential  for  true  culture  that  all 
paths  of  service  should  be  open,  without  contempt, 
to  every  faculty  to  fill  them ;  because  true  good  can 
only  come  through  the  practice  of  s^(f-government, 
and  true  politics  through  a  common  interest  in  the 
common  good. 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.^ 


The  Council  of  the  "  Workingmen's  International 
Association,"  in  their  Defense  of  the  Paris  Commu- 
nists, define  what  they  call  "  the  true  secret  "  of  the 
world-wide  movement  which  they  represent.  It  sig- 
nifies, we  learn,  essentially  "  a  working-class  govern- 
ment, the  product  of  the  struggle  of  the  producing 
against  the  appropriating  class,"  —  the  function  of 
which  shall  be  "to  transform  the  means  of  production, 
land,  and  capital,  into  the  mere  instruments  of  free, 
associated  labor."  And  its  authorized  organs,  while 
disclaiming  for  the  present  any  intention  of  appeal- 
ing to  violence,  yet  already  announce  the  purpose,  in 
Europe  and  America  alike,  to  ''  transform  all  land, 
forests,  railroads,  canals,  telegraphs,  quarries,  and  all 
great  properties,  such  as  manufactories,  in  favor  of 
the  State,"  which  is  to  "  work  them  for  the  benefit 
of  every  person  engaged  in  producing ; "  in  other 
words,  "  for  such  as  earn  by  the  sweat  of  the  brow."  ^ 

However  startling  for  America,  the  substance  of 
this  "  true  secret "  is  familiar  enough  to  French  ex- 
perience ;  being  but  a  new  phase  of  the  "coercive 

1  Keprinted  from  The  Radical  for  November,  1871. 

2  The  Statement  of  Dr.  Marx,  its  Secretary,  is  given  in  The  New 
York  Herald,  of  August  3,  1871.  For  a  fuller  account,  see  Mr.  Hin- 
ton'.^  valuable  article  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly ,  for  May,  1871,  or  Eich- 
hoff 's  pamphlet,  Die  Internationale  Arheiter association,  Berlin,  1868. 


282  LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

communism"  of  Babeuf,  St.  Simon,  and  Louis  Blanc. 
It  is  to  make  short  work  with  private  liberties  and 
responsibilities,  and  apply  the  forces  of  modern  ma- 
terialism in  constructing  such  an  autocracy  as  the 
world  has  never  seen.  It  would  in  fact  substitute 
the  State  for  the  Person,  and  forcibly  "  transform  " 
man,  —  not  the  poorest  men  only,  as  moneyed  and 
titled  monopoly  must,  but  even  worse,  —  man  as 
such,  every  living  soul,  into  a  creature  of  legislation, 
a  mere  functionary  and  machine.  Such  a  result 
would  be  none  the  less  destructive,  whatever  the 
kind  of  legislation  that  had  led  to  it.  Here,  how- 
ever, we  have  the  absolutist  legislation  of  a  class. 

Let  us  do  this  Society  justice.  It  denounces  war ; 
demands  education  for  all ;  adopts  a  noble  motto,  — 
''  No  rights  without  duties,  no  duties  without  rights." 
It  did  good  service  to  our  Union  in  the  war  with 
slaver}^  It  is,  moreover,  the  natural  recoil  of  their 
own  enginery  on  the  oppressing  classes  in  Europe. 
The  victim  of  "  regulation "  has  but  grasped  the 
weapon  which  has  proved  so  effective  against  him ; 
he  will  see  now  what  it  can  do  to  make  him,  in  his 
turn,  the  master. 

We  fully  recognize  also  the  miseries  of  low-paid 
labor,  that  disgrace  the  most  enlightened  sections  of 
our  own  country.  We  hear  its  cry  of  endless  de- 
pendence and  hopeless  competition  ;  its  demands  that 
can  no  longer  be  suppressed  or  ignored.  And  there- 
fore we  mean  to  enter  our  protest  against  a  method 
of  dealing  with  it  that  would,  we  believe,  not  only 
aggravate  every  industrial  evil,  but  strike  at  the  very 
substance  of  manhood. 

As  its  career  is  just  opening  in  this  country,  this 
great  organizing  force  will  doubtless  be  hailed  as 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      283 

promise  of  relief  from  their  bitter  burdens  by  thou- 
sands who  can  have  but  slight  conception  of  its  ten- 
dencies. Many  programmes  of  labor  reform,  too,  are 
drifting  in  the  same  direction,  which  have  not  yet 
reached  its  principle  of  absolute  coercion.  They  con- 
tain elements  already  which  forbid  them  to  represent 
the  real  interests  and  rights  of  labor  much  better  than 
feudalism  or  caste.  They  play  into  the  very  hands 
of  monopol}^,  by  following  its  example  in  putting 
oppressive  burdens  for  free  opportunity,  and  empty 
formulas  for  the  laws  of  social  science  and  the  forces 
of  civilization.  The  era  of  social  justice  will  not  be 
ushered  in  by  those  who  have  nothing  better  to  urge 
than  the  old  strife  of  classes  for  supremacy,  and  who 
make  arrogant  assumption  of  exclusive  right  to  the 
honorable  title  of  "  working-men."  It  is  in  these 
points  of  view,  which  most  deeply  concern  the  liber- 
ties of  labor  itself,  that  I  propose  to  criticise  these 
methods  of  reform. 

We  cannot,  to  use  an  expressive  phrase,  "go  back 
on  "  civilization  and  reject  the  results  of  ages.  The 
wrongs  of  the  worst-paid  workman  are  not  to  be 
righted  by  ignoring  that  breadth  of  meaning  which 
the  terms  of  the  question  have  now  fairly  attained. 
To  discuss  rights  and  interests  of  "  the  laboring 
class,"  on  the  understanding  that  we  are  to  exclude 
from  the  category  of  labor  every  form  of  industry 
but  manual  toil,  is  to  ignore  the  whole  sense  of 
American  civilization.  Is  it  credible  that  a  hu- 
mane and  intelligent  people  should  assume  that  the 
work  of  men's  hands  has  an  industrial  value  as  such, 
beyond  that  which  belongs  to  their  intellectual  and 
sympathetic  activities?  Will  it  define  productive 
labor  as  work  by  the  job,  or  by  the  day,  and  refuse 


284     LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

the  name  to  processes  of  invention  that  cost  the  men- 
tal wear  of  life- times,  and  even  supply  the  motive 
forces  of  material  civilization  ?  Will  it  consent  to 
narrow  its  "  laboring  class,"  so  that  the  term  shall 
not  include  the  professions  whose  toils  minister,  how- 
ever imperfectly,  to  constant  demands  of  soul,  body, 
and  estate ;  so  that  educators  of  the  young  and  coun- 
selors of  the  old  shall  be  set  off  as  drones  in  the  in- 
dustrial hive  ?  Are  we  to  throw  out  of  the  list  of 
"  working-men  "  the  philosopher,  who  explores  moral 
and  spiritual  problems,  and  states  the  laws  of  intelli- 
gence, the  economies  that  cannot  be  foregone  ?  Or 
the  poet,  who  cheers  the  day  with  insight  that  brings 
health  and  sweetness  to  all  thought  and  work  ?  Or 
the  artist,  whether  musician,  painter,  sculptor,  or 
dramatist,  whose  embodiments  of  nature  and  feeling 
refine  taste,  and  broaden  sympathy,  and  concentrate 
the  undefined  aspirations  of  the  age  into  living  form 
and  purpose  ?  Does  labor  exclude  the  scholar's  func- 
tion, —  to  present  man  under  different  phases  of  re- 
ligion and  culture,  and  enforce  universalit}^  by  tracing 
the  movement  of  ideas  and  laws  through  the  ages  of 
his  development  ?  Are  we  to  reckon  out  the  cares 
of  maternity,  the  mutual  offices  of  domestic  life,  social 
efficiencies,  the  subtle  forces  of  character,  the  friend, 
the  lover,  the  "  fanatic,"  whose  lonely  dream  pros- 
pects the  track  for  coming  generations  ?  Are  we  to 
count  as  outside  of  labor- contribution  all  work  that 
reforms  the  vicious,  relieves  the  helpless,  or  sets  the 
poor  in  the  way  to  self-help  ? 

Stated  thus,  these  questions  may  seem  to  answer 
themselves.  Yet  it  is  easy  for  parties  to  break  away 
from  principles  that  few  of  their  members  would 
theoretically  deny.     This  will  become  at  once  evi- 


LABOR   PARTIES   AND   LABOR   REFORM.  285 

dent  if  we  bring  our  test  closer  to  what  is  now  tech- 
nically called  the  labor  question,  and  ask  further,  if 
labor  is  definable  as  that  kind  of  service  for  which 
wages  are  paid,  in  distinction  from  that  kind  of  ser- 
vice which  consists  in  providing  the  fund  out  of  which 
they  are  to  be  paid ;  from  that  kind  of  service  which 
plans  and  directs  the  operation,  and  bears  the  risk 
and  responsibility  ?  In  other  words  is  labor  as  such 
so  clearly  distinguishable  from  capital  in  this  sense, 
that  the  toils  of  mind  as  well  as  body  involved  in  the 
application  of  the  latter  do  not  deserve  to  enter  into 
our  estimate  of  ''  the  rights  of  labor  "  ?  We  must  be 
very  far  from  the  track  of  science  or  freedom,  if  our 
definitions  threaten  to  fall  into  such  arbitrariness  as 
this. 

Yet  I  cannot  but  note  that  the  ordinary  tone  of 
labor-reform  programmes  and  appeals,  so  far,  involves 
the  assumption  that  production  consists  in  the  direct 
creation  of  material  values  only.  Values  that  can- 
not be  measured,  tabulated,  invoiced,  and  made  the 
basis  of  governmental  direction  are  excluded  at  the 
very  threshold.  Yet  every  admission  that  purely  in- 
tellectual or  moral  forces  need  not  enter  into  esti- 
mates of  productive  industry  is  an  admission  that 
these  forces  have  no  claim  to  share  in  the  wealth 
that  results  from  production.  To  teach,  as  most 
philosophers  of  the  new  "  positive  "  schools  do,  in  one 
or  another  form,  teach,  that  arithmetical  and  me- 
chanical values  are  the  mainsprings  of  civilization,  is 
simply  to  sow  the  seeds  of  barbarism  in  the  fields  of 
political  economy. 

The  sweat  of  honest  thought  and  just  self-disci- 
pline is,  to  say  the  least,  quite  as  essential  to  the  pres- 
ervation of  that  social  order  by  which  all  industry 


286     LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

is  maintained  as  that  whicli  falls  from  the  brow  in 
earning  the  daily  bread ;  and  for  a  citizen,  whether 
rich  or  poor,  to  be  ignorant  or  reckless  of  this  truth 
proves  him  to  be,  so  far,  socially  and  politically  a  de- 
structive. It  is  therefore  but  the  dictate  of  common 
prudence  that  every  sign  of  a  tendency  to  depreciate 
invisible  production  should  be  met  at  once,  by  all 
trades  and  professions  as  a  source  of  demoralization 
to  the  whole  body  politic.  Peace,  order,  credit,  mu- 
tual help,  are  as  truly  the  contribution  of  spiritual 
labor  as  the  Order  of  Nature  is  a  temple  not  made 
with  hands.  The  spur  that  industry  feels  from  the 
family  and  the  home,  —  economy  and  thrift,  all  hon- 
est and  handsome  work,  waste  avoided,  the  bitter- 
ness of  competition  tempered,  the  conflict  of  interests 
counteracted  by  conscience  and  good-will,  —  these  are 
all  products  of  moral  and  spiritual  ideas  subtly  cir- 
culating in  the  atmosphere  of  the  time.  And  these 
immeasurable  sources  of  public  good  can  only  be 
guarded  by  a  jealous  loyalty,  sensitive  to  every  slur 
cast  upon  the  value  of  non-material  productive  forces, 
whether  in  the  name  of  capital  or  labor,  of  the  rich, 
or  of  the  poor. 

And  in  this  spirit  we  must  demand  of  those  who 
rally  for  a  "  producing  class,"  as  against  the  rest  of 
the  community,  where  or  how  they  will  draw  the  line 
which  justifies  their  use  of  this  anti-republican  name 
of  "class."  Every  one  is  a  producer  in  those  re- 
spects in  which  he  is  a  contributor  to  the  public 
wealth,  in  the  broadest  sense  of  wealthy  in  whatever 
other  respects  he  may  fail  to  render  service.  How 
many  men,  women,  children,  are  there  in  a  country 
like  ours  who  are  not  producers  in  this  sense  ?  Whose 
work  is  of  a  kind  so  inconspicuous  that  you  can  afford 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.     287 

to  count  it  out?  Even  the  child  in  a  kindergarten 
school  is  a  producer,  in  combining  pretty  colors,  or 
constructing  rude  forms  and  figures  that  embody  the 
first  essays  of  that  aesthetic  sense  which  shall  here- 
after make  our  artisans  artists  and  all  labor  an  edu- 
cation of  the  higher  faculties.  Every  great  thought 
and  every  good  thought  is  a  source  of  public  wealth : 
helping  to  make  true  men  or  women,  it  helps  to  create 
and  to  save  even  material  values,  steadying  the  hands 
that  move  machinery,  and  fostering  real  cooperation. 
For  one,  I  recognize  no  ''laboring  class"  as  distinct 
from  the  great  body  of  producers  in  this  largest  sense, 
and  hold  it  a  pure  delusion  to  suppose  that  our  civili- 
zation affords  any  basis  for  forming  one.  There  are 
rich  laborers  and  poor  laborers ;  there  are  laborers 
whose  wages  do  not  supply  their  daily  needs,  and 
laborers  who  lay  by  something  from  their  wages  ; 
and  from  this,  all  the  way  on  to  those  who  put  large 
capital  to  productive  service,  there  is  a  continuous 
line  of  laboring  men.  No  movement  can  really  rep- 
resent the  interests  of  labor  which  does  not  recognize 
the  common  interests  of  all  these  different  human 
conditions.  It  is  radically  mischievous  to  make  this 
a  question  between  classes  of  persons.  Labor  is  the 
grand  creative  energy  of  society,  the  wisdom  whose 
voice  is  to  all  the  sons  and  daughters  of  men,  calling 
them  to  that  steady  application  of  all  powers  to  right 
and  helpful  uses,  which  shall  stamp  each  person's  do- 
ing with  productive  value,  and  make  it  a  common 
good.  This  universality  alone  can  define  the  word, 
and  the  lofty  claims  must  all  pay  allegiance  to  this. 

Amidst  the  confused  battle-cries  of  labor  parties 
organizing  to  put  down  ''  the  appropriating  class," 
the  vital  point  of  the  problem  secures,  it  is  to  be 


288     LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

feared,  but  an  imperfect  hearing.  There  is  surely 
nothing  in  mere  labor,  or  production  either,  as  such, 
that  can  claim  our  allegiance  ;  since  labor  may  be  for 
mischief,  as  that  of  over-speculation,  which  ruins  a 
community  by  the  most  wearing  and  frenzied  per- 
sonal toil ;  and  production  may  be  of  things  destruc^ 
tive,  as  the  distiller's  product  when  it  swells  into  tide- 
waves  of  delirium  and  crime.  Productive  labor  is  not 
that  which  makes  one  nian  rich  by  making  another 
poor ;  robbing  Peter  to  pay  Paul  adds  nothing  to  the 
sum  of  wealth.  But  on  the  other  hand,  all  labor 
which  increases  the  means  of  well-being  in  the  com- 
munity, whether  in  the  material,  social,  intellectual, 
moral,  aesthetic,  or  religious  sphere,  is  productive  la- 
bor, and  deserves  respect.  The  capitalist  who  con- 
tributes such  increase,  whatever  the  form  of  his 
capital  may  be,  is  a  productive  laborer,  in  every  re- 
spectable sense ;  and  the  laborer  for  wages  who  does 
the  same  thing  is  a  productive  capitalist  in  just  the 
same  sense  with  the  other,  —  at  once  through  the 
strength  and  skill  which  he  applies,  and  through  that 
which  he  may  lay  up  to  invest  productively  in  the 
creation  of  a  home,  or  a  business,  or  in  the  education 
of  his  children,  or  in  any  other  honest  way  of  benefit 
to  society,  or  of  culture  to  himself.  So  that  the  first 
step  towards  justifying  our  American  "honor  to 
labor"  is  to  recognize  that  God  hath  joined  labor  and 
capital,  and  that  no  man  or  party  has  authority  to 
put  them  asunder,  or  to  declare  them  foes.  And  the 
next  is  to  recognize  that  what  entitles  labor  to  honor 
and  authority,  is  not  to  be  limited  by  any  arbitrary 
definition  of  labor,  since  it  is  for  all  forms  thereof 
essentially  one  and  the  same  thing.  So  that  the 
workman  who  helps  produce  an  article  of  manufac- 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      289 

ture  does  not  respect  that  which  really  deserves  re- 
spect in  his  own  productive  work,  unless  he  recog- 
nizes the  similar  claims  on  behalf  not  only  of  the 
capitalist  in  business,  but  of  the  teacher,  the  artist, 
the  scientist,  the  poet,  the  moral  reformer,  the  pro- 
ducer of  any  non-material  value  whatever. 

And  the  sum  is  that  public  or  private  movements 
are  to  be  regarded  as  in  the  interest  of  labor  in  pro- 
portion to  the  breadth  of  their  estimate  of  the  ele- 
ments of  individual  and  social  well-being,  and  in  that 
proportion  only. 

I  cannot  believe  that  we  shall  make  any  progress 
towards  solving  the  difficult  problem  of  the  relations 
of  labor,  until  we  start  with  appreciating  those  aims 
and  motives  in  which  every  one,  whatever  his  special 
work,  is  bound  to  share,  and  which  constitute  the  com- 
mon cause.  The  intelligence  needed  for  counteracting 
that  terrible  force  of  natural  selection,  that  weeding 
out  of  the  weak  by  the  strong  which  holds  as  true  of 
the  world  of  trade  as  of  the  world  of  species,  can 
never  receive  one  genuine  impulse,  so  long  as  this 
duty  remains  unrecognized.  No  body  of  men  can  be 
intellectually  benefited  by  combination  with  a  view 
to  their  isolated  interests  only ;  it  is  but  individu- 
alism intensified,  a  leaven  of  mental  as  well  as  social 
dissolution.  They  are  educated  in  social  functions 
only  by  that  spirit  and  by  that  work  which  adds  to 
the  sum  of  mutual  understanding  and  mutual  help. 
The  industrial  wisdom  we  want  most  is  that  which 
understands  how  much  more  numerous  and  vital  are 
the  points  of  common  interest  which  unite  different 
forms  of  industry  than  those  antagonisms,  actual  or 
supposed,  upon  which  it  is  now  sought  to  array  their 
representatives  in  definitely  hostile  classes.     It  will 

19 


290      LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

not  improve  either  the  morals  or  the  sense  of  the 
laborer  for  wages,  any  more  than  it  will  riglit  his 
wrongs,  to  inveigh  against  capital  as  such,  while  it  is 
in  fact  capital  which  he  is  constantly  drawing  on  in 
himself,  and  seeking  to  accumulate  for  himself,  and 
applying,  so  far  as  he  can  obtain  it,  in  investments 
which  are  wise  or  foolish,  for  the  general  good  or 
harm,  according  to  the  character  of  his  own  private 
habits  and  tastes.  It  does  not  help  his  cause  to  be 
ignorant  that  capital  injures  him  only  in  those  in- 
stances in  which  it  injures  itself;  that  is,  where  an 
unfair  use  is  made  of  greater  capital  to  suppress  the 
opportunities  of  less. 

And  on  the  other  hand  it  is  equally  mischievous 
for  the  capitalist,  whose  accumulated  money  fund 
gives  him  every  advantage  in  the  labor  market  over 
the  man  who  has  nothing  to  sell  but  his  wasting 
muscles  and  his  fleeting  time,  to  be  ignorant  or  re- 
gardless of  the  fact  that  his  own  capital  is  a  part  of 
the  great  labor  fund  of  the  community,  and  that  its 
development  depends  wholly  on  the  free  development 
of  labor  in  every  form.  It  will  not  add  to  his  se- 
curity to  forget  that  he  has  no  right  to  quarrel  with 
such  combinations  as  may  be  necessary  for  the  pro- 
tection of  wages-labor,  except  in  so  far  as  these  are 
injurious  to  labor  itself:  that  is,  where  they  employ 
the  power  of  combination  to  cripple  men  in  the  use 
of  their  own  labor-capital,  whether  of  muscles  or  of 
mind. 

I  have  hope  in  those  reformers  only  who  can 
teach  us  to  emphasize  our  common  interests  ;  to  drop 
the  old-world  slogan,  "  Labor  and  Capital  are  natural 
enemies,"  and  start  with  this  watch- word  to  an  age 
of  brotherhood,  "  Labor  and  Capital  are  interdepend- 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      291 

ent  forces  in  each  and  every  personality,  and  consti- 
tute every  one  a  natural  guardian  of  their  common 
cause."  Let  those  meanings  of  the  words  have  rule 
which  point  to  culture  and  civilization.  A  problem 
so  universal  in  its  relations  cannot  dispense  with 
ideal  tests  and  standards,  and  hastens  to  enforce 
them  upon  all  experiment.  The  key  to  every  posi- 
tion is  already  found  to  be,  not  antagonism,  but  co- 
operation. No  other  chemistry  has  hitherto  solved 
a  single  dilemma  of  the  industrial  world.  There  is 
a  class,  we  are  well  aware,  of  whose  utter  weakness 
it  would  be  pure  mockery  to  bid  them  cooperate. 
And  to  make  possible  for  these  the  leisure,  the 
education,  the  homes,  the  wages,  that  shall  permit 
them  to  do  so,  is  the  instant  duty  of  moneyed  capital 
and  manual  labor  alike.  If  they  neglect  it,  both 
capital  and  labor  will  reap  the  whirlwind.  But  the 
common  sense  and  good  feeling  which  the  freedom 
of  our  social  relations  makes  easy  for  all,  can  open 
right  paths  at  will.  This  is  the  genius  to  devise  all 
requisite  forms  of  partnership  and  mutual  guarantee. 
But  so  long  as  this  is  foreclosed,  there  is  no  step  in 
legislation,  and  no  measure  of  compromise,  that  can 
escape  subserving  the  ancient  greed  whose  record  is 
written  in  social  demoralization  and  the  misery  of 
nations. 

Of  all  necessities  involved  in  the  problem  of  labor, 
there  is  none  so  practical,  none  so  pressing,  as  this 
for  which  we  plead.  What  shall  we  gain,  so  long  as 
the  appeals  of  labor  reformers  are  made  to  motives 
which  lie  in  the  same  moral  plane  with  those  which 
they  denounce ;  so  long  as  they  cover  out  of  sight 
the  essential  fact  that  the  pursuit  of  private  or  class 
interest  alone  is  equally  mischievous  in  every  condi- 


292      LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

tion  and  form  of  work  ?  By  this  spirit  of  rapacity 
all  parties,  however  they  may  charge  each  other 
with  the  exclusive  responsibility  for  the  results  of 
financial  self-seeking,  are  equally  liable  to  be  tempted. 
The  avaricious  capitalist  cripples  the  free  develop- 
ment of  capital.  The  hand  workman  who  looks  no 
further  than  the  aggrandizement  of  his  labor  club  or 
his  aggressive  policy,  cripples  the  free  development 
of  labor.  The  most  industrious  men,  conbining  for 
clannish  purposes,  hasten  to  set  up  the  very  monop- 
oly they  assail  as  the  source  of  their  own  wrongs. 
Is  it  intolerable  that  speculators,  combining  to  hoard 
and  hold  back  the  products  of  nature,  should  stim- 
ulate the  prices  of  food  till  a  great  multitude  are 
threatened  with  famine  ?  Where  is  the  practical 
difference  in  motive  or  result  when  men  associate 
for  the  purpose  of  artificially  limiting  the  supply  of 
labor  by  restricting  the  number  of  workmen  ;  depriv- 
ing the  individual  of  his  liberty  to  find  education 
and  employment  in  branches  of  industry  wherein  he 
might,  but  for  such  class  interference,  have  taken  his 
chance  with  his  neighbors,  and  enforcing  obedience 
to  organized  dictation,  as  the  condition  on  which  he 
shall  be  allowed  to  practice  his  honest  calling  and 
earn  his  daily  bread  ?  Can  labor  resist  oppression 
without  the  sphere  of  its  control  by  oppression 
within  it  ? 

What  right  have  a  body  of  workmen,  engaged  in 
a  special  branch  of  industry,  to  assume  themselves 
to  be  the  supreme  regulators  of  that  branch,  and  to 
vote  down  the  equal  right  of  any  man  to  engage  in 
it,  upon  such  terms  as  his  honest  effort  can  command? 
The  very  pretense  of  such  authority  threatens  a  so- 
cial slavery  infinitely  worse  than  any  form  of  polit- 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      293 

ical  absolutism  yet  known  ;  all  the  worse  because  it 
exploits  the  machinery  of  free  institutions  themselves 
to  annihilate  personal  freedom. 

The  one  plausible  ground  for  arbitrarily  limiting 
liberty  of  access  to  the  practice  of  a  craft  is  the  im- 
portance of  disciplines  which  shall  guarantee  excel- 
lence in  the  product.  But  this  desirable  result  is 
not  to  be  accomplished,  under  modern  institutions, 
by  antagonizing  labor  and  capital,  nor  by  shutting 
out  laborers  for  their  refusal  to  combine  in  operations 
to  secure  larger  profits  for  the  whole.  It  demands 
the  most  cordial  relations  between  capital  and  labor. 
It  involves  procuring  every  form  of  personal  talent, 
by  opening  opportunities  of  culture  and  employment 
to  all  seekers.  A  high  order  of  product  is  the  bloom 
of  a  genial  summer  of  cooperative  industry.  It  has, 
moreover,  its  moral  conditions,  which  no  external 
arrangements  can  secure.  It  requires  a  different  or- 
der of  motives  from  those  which  find  play  in  organ- 
izing labor  parties  or  managing  controversies  with 
capital.  It  depends,  after  all  that  can  be  said  and 
done,  upon  conscience  ;  upon  the  sense  of  a  spiritual 
and  aesthetic  value  in  production ;  upon  just  that 
thing  in  which,  it  is  but  commonplace  to  repeat, 
large  capitalists  and  small  capitalists  generally, 
buyers  and  sellers  of  work,  managers  and  operatives, 
are  equally  deficient,  namely,  the  preference  of  qual- 
ity to  quantity,  of  faithful  to  gainful  methods  ;  upon 
the  love  of  doing  honest,  thorough,  handsome,  ser- 
viceable work,  in  the  firm  conviction  that  this  is 
what  makes  one  a  genuine  laborer  and  producer,  not 
the  mere  working  a  given  number  of  hours,  without 
regard  to  the  character  of  the  performance.  This 
real  respect  for  labor  is  the  one  great  lack,  amidst 


294      LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

all  our  manifestoes  of  its  rights  and  ovations  to  its 
name.  This,  when  it  comes,  will  be  true  labor  re- 
form, to  be  hailed  with  enthusiasm  and  faith.  Its 
approach  would  be  felt,  first  of  all,  in  an  awakening 
of  shame  and  indignation  at  the  base  and  ignorant 
work  of  all  kinds  which  constantly  wastes  our  re- 
sources with  leakage  that  no  man  can  measure,  and 
demoralizes  social  relations  with  petty  annoyances  at 
every  turn,  while  it  slaughters  life  and  sows  disease 
on  a  portentous  scale. 

Most  of  what  is  now  called  labor  reform  consists, 
in  fact,  whatever  the  theory,  in  the  partisan  manip- 
ulation of  societies  devoted  to  isolated  interests  and 
exclusive  claims.  It  tends  to  embitter  the  antago- 
nism to  capital  with  contempt  for  all  rights  of  vested 
property,  even  for  those  returns  which  natural  uses 
will  command.  The  absence  of  feudal  institutions 
might  seem  to  secure  America  against  socialist  revo- 
lution, in  Europe  the  natural  reaction  upon  ages  of 
organized  wrongs.  Yet  this  would  be  but  a  super- 
ficial view  of  the  grounds  of  such  revolution.  Amer- 
ica has  no  VendSme  Column  to  overturn,  no  palaces 
to  fire,  no  priesthood  to  spoil  and  slay.  But  it  is 
none  the  less  true  that  there  lies  a  perilous  fascina- 
tion for  intensely  democratic  instincts  in  the  theory 
that  property  has  no  rights  which  the  majority  may 
not  abrogate  at  will.  The  authority  of  numbers,  the 
worship  of  popular  desire,  is  pushed  to  its  extreme 
in  the  phase  of  republicanism  through  which  w^e  are 
passing.  The  true  industrial  problem  for  our  politics 
is  not,  how  shall  majorities  prove  the  extent  of  their 
power,  but  how  shall  they  learn  to  respect  the  prin- 
ciple that  rights  of  labor  and  rights  of  property  are 
mutual  guarantees.     But  there  is  need  of  something 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      295 

more  than  zeal  for  equality  and  the  "vox  populi, 
vox  Dei,"  to  render  a  community  the  true  guardian 
of  this  safeguard  of  individual  freedom.  Only  as  the 
lesson  of  a  mature  self-control,  such  as  the  Celt,  for 
example,  has  hitherto  even  failed  to  conceive,  can  it 
realize  the  primal  truth,  that  security  of  ownership 
is  labor's  indispensable  motive  power,  and  reckless 
violation  of  ownership  its  suicide. 

Respect  for  all  real  rights  and  uses  of  property  is 
as  truly  the  basis  of  free  industry  as  contempt  for 
all  but  its  spurious  ones  is  the  basis  of  slavery.  I 
know  the  logic  that  would  repeal  all  private  owner- 
ship in  land  in  the  name  of  mankind.  But  I  know 
that  such  shift  of  title  would  also  repeal  the  Family 
and  the  Home,  which  forever  rest  thereon.  Nor  is 
the  practical  repeal  of  ethical  relations  between  men 
to  be  greatly  desired.  Yet  the  International  Labor 
Congress  last  year,  at  Basel,  representing  the  democ- 
racy of  labor  reform,  not  only  indulged  in  denuncia- 
tions of  landed  property  as  such,  but  voted  that 
society  had  the  right,  by  decision  of  the  majority,  to 
abolish  it  altogether :  mere  rapine  seriously  proposed 
in  the  name  of  liberty.  Proposals  to  abolish  rent, 
interest,  and  the  profits  of  capital  generally,  have 
been  heard  at  similar  meetings  in  this  country.  The 
crusade  against  rent,  of  which  Proudhon  was  the 
great  French  apostle,  meant  for  him  an  assault  on 
the  very  principle  of  ownership.  And  what,  in  fact, 
do  all  measures  of  this  latter  kind  substantially 
mean  ?  They  would  deprive  property  of  the  returns 
which  it  naturally  yields  its  owners,  when  trans- 
ferred for  a  time  in  the  shape  of  opportunities  to 
other  persons,  instead  of  being  expended  upon  pres- 
ent enjoyment.     Rent  and  interest  represent  legit- 


296      LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

imate  profits  of  capital,  —  being  payment  for  accom- 
modations absolutely  required  for  the  production 
of  fresh  values.  If  they  were  abolished,  not  only 
would  labor  lose  an  important  stimulus,  but  all  mu- 
tual aid  would  necessarily  be  resolved  into  the  form 
of  outright  gift ;  so  that  the  laborer  would  be  stripped 
of  his  self-respect,  having  become  a  dependent  on 
bounty  for  the  supply  of  proper  facilities  in  his  avo- 
cation. And  such  demoralization  would  result  that 
it  would  be  necessary  as  a  next  step  to  abolish  the 
benefaction,  by  denying  the  ownership  claimed  to 
reside  in  the  giver.  All  private  capital  that  would 
naturally  find  its  uses  as  investment,  or  else  as 
bounty,  would  thus  have  to  be  declared  public  prop- 
erty, and  to  be  distributed  where  it  is  wanted,  each 
needy  applicant  receiving  a  part  of  these  confiscated 
surplus  earnings  of  others,  as  if  it  were  his  own. 
How  much  earning  there  would  be  upon  such  ten- 
ures, or  absence  of  tenure  rather,  and  how  much 
productive  force,  with  this  systematic  spoliation  in 
prospect  or  operation,  it  is  easy  to  estimate. 

All  communistic  systems  have  involved  Proudhon's 
premise,  "  Property  is  theft ; "  some  seeking  to  abolish 
it  by  free  cooperation,  others  by  coercive  means,  ap- 
pealing to  the  State.  As  regards  the  latter  class,  by 
the  way,  two  questions  are  pertinent.  If  property 
be  theft,  what  must  the  State  be  in  making  itself 
sole  proprietary  ?  And  who  has  ever  constituted  the 
joint  body  of  producers,  under  the  name  of  commu- 
nity, or  whatever  other  name,  prime  owner  of  those 
laws  and  elements  of  nature  which  are  the  basis  of 
all  production?  Yet  all  anti-property  movements 
are  clearly  associated  with  this  belief  in  politico-in- 
dustrial absolutism,  either  as  tending  towards  it,  in- 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      297 

tentionally  or  not,  or  else  as  flowing  by  natural  infer- 
ence from  it. 

With  us  the  theoretic  rejection  of  property  is  rare. 
But  the  undermining  of  its  natural  rights  and  uses 
is  among  the  practical  results  of  a  theory  which  al- 
ready inspires  political  organizations  in  the  supposed 
interest  of  labor.  I  mean  the  theory  that  all  per- 
sonal rights  flow  from  popular  will,  and  that  full 
industrial  justice  can  be  extemporized  and  enforced 
in  the  name  of  the  State. 

Note  the  radical  vice  of  this  theory.  It  ignores 
two  essential  facts.  The  first  is  that  the  public  virtue 
which  men  can  effect  by  outward  regulation  will  not 
rise  above  the  level  of  their  own  motive,  and  may 
fall  far  below  it.  And  the  second  is  that  the  great 
natural  laws,  which  govern  the  complex  relations  of 
free  men,  cannot  be  made  to  run  in  predetermined 
grooves  of  policy.  These  laws  must  have  the  margin 
that  becomes  the  vastness  of  their  sphere,  and  the 
freedom  of  the  individual  minds  and  wills  whose  pro- 
cesses are  their  material.  There  are,  of  course,  limits 
within  which  votes  and  laws  for  the  regulation  of  the 
status  of  labor  are  effective  and  useful ;  but  it  is  easy 
to  overstep  these  limits,  and  to  trench  upon  those  or- 
ganic natural  methods  which  are  larger  and  wiser 
than  our  plans.  And  when  this  is  done,  political 
manipulation  and  manoeuvre  have  a  clear  track  for 
working  the  widest  and  deepest  demoralization ; 
labor  being  at  once  the  most  private  and  the  most 
public  of  spheres,  feeding  every  spring  of  personal 
motive  and  universal  good. 

Organized  "  labor  reform "  in  America  is  rapidly 
assuming  the  aspect  here  indicated.  It  is  becoming 
an  unrestrained  appeal  to  the  forces  of  political  com- 


298     LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

bination;  an  absolute  faith  in  the  all-sufficiency  of 
programmes  drawn  up  in  the  interest  of  a  "  laboring 
class,"  and  enacted  into  laws,  to  settle  every  element 
of  this  most  delicate  and  complex  of  problems.  It 
seems  to  have  no  conception  of  the  existence  of  any 
limits,  either  to  what  political  autocracy,  thus  exer- 
cised, can  accomplish,  or  to  what  the  community  may 
properly  ask  or  expect  it  to  accomplish.  Thus  the 
National  Labor  Party  proposes  that  Congress  should 
perform  the  function  of  "  so  regulating  the  interest  on 
bonds  and  the  value  of  currency  as  to  effect  an  equi- 
table distribution  of  the  products  of  labor  between 
money  or  non-producing  capital  and  productive  in- 
dustry "  !  An  omnipotent  Congress  indeed,  and  om- 
niscient too,  that  shall  effect  a  just  division  of  the 
profits  of  industry  and  equitable  relations  in  trade, 
by  declaring  from  time  to  time,  through  some  mys- 
terious divination  of  the  public  mind,  that  a  piece  of 
paper  currency  shall  pass  for  so  much  in  the  market, 
or  that  governmerit  loans  shall  pay  so  much  or  so 
little  to  the  lender !  What  conception  of  the  laws  of 
human  nature,  or  of  its  liberties,  or  of  the  sources  of 
industrial  inequalities  and  injustice,  can  men  have, 
who  expect  such  legislation,  fluctuating,  imperfect, 
itself  dependent  on  party  interests  and  the  strongest 
forces  in  the  market,  to  impose  these  vast  results 
upon  that  whole  complex  of  competitive  passions  and 
untraceable  relations  which  we  call  the  business 
world  ?  The  same  programme  in  which  this  stu- 
pendous regeneration  is  laid  out  as  the  work  of  Con- 
gress proposes  that  laws  enacted  for  the  purpose  shall 
be  executed  through  the  wisdom  of  a  "  board  of  man- 
agement," to  be  selected,  it  would  seem,  by  the  "  labor 
party  "  itself,  when  it  shall  have  reached  the  political 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      299 

ascendency  requisite  for  its  aims.  As  a  further  result 
of  these  and  other  political  measures,  "  all  able-bodied 
intelligent  persons  "  are  to  be  caused  to  "  contribute 
to  the  common  stock,  by  fruitful  industry,  a  sum 
equal  to  their  own  support ;  "  and  legislation  in  gen- 
eral is  to  be  "  made  to  tend  as  far  as  possible  to  equi- 
table distribution  of  surplus  products."  To  what 
extent  the  confiscation  of  such  surplus  of  personal 
property  by  popular  majorities  shall  be  needed  for 
the  accomplishment  of  this  last  result  is  not  yet  in 
question.  But  the  substance  of  the  belief  is  this.  A 
ready-made  system  of  regulations,  covering  the  whole 
field  of  industrial  activity,  can  take  up  the  motive 
forces  of  civilization  in  its  hands,  and  shape  them  like 
potter's  clay  into  an  unknown  equity,  whose  very  de- 
termination, nevertheless,  defies  all  our  existing  so- 
cial wisdom,  and  depends  on  a  spirit  of  cooperation 
yet  to  be  created  and  diffused  ! 

The  managers  of  the  Eight-Hour  Movement  prom- 
ise yet  greater  things.  The  enactment  of  their  pro- 
gramme is  not  only  to  effect  the  increase  of  wages 
and  inteUigence,  needed  to  undermine  the  whole 
wages  system,  but  will  "secure  such  distribution  of 
wealth  that  poverty  shall  finally  become  impossi- 
ble."^ Such  the  miracles  of  legislation.  It  can  de- 
cide the  terms  on  which  labor  shall  be  bought  and 
sold  ;  aboMsh  competition  among  laborers  ;  set  aside 
the  working  of  demand  and  supply  !  It  shall  even 
reconstruct  human  nature ;  make  it  impossible  for 
men  to  wrong  or  to  be  wronged,  and  free  them  from 
the  natural  penalties  for  indolence,  thriftlessness,  and 
vice !     Can  the  illusions  of  materialism  further  go  ? 

1  Letter  of  Boston  Eight-Hour  League  to  the  Working-Men  of  New 
York.    1871. 


300      LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

This  dream  of  political  autocracy  especially  busies 
itself  with  treating  the  currency  as  an  independent  ele- 
ment whose  character  is  to  be  fixed,  like  everything 
else,  by  pure  force  of  legislation.  Settle  by  law  what 
precise  value  this  representative  of  all  values  shall 
represent,  and  are  we  not  in  a  way  to  abolish  at  once 
the  crime  of  being  rich  and  the  outrage  of  being 
poor  ?  If  only  our  money  medium  would  stand  for 
just  what  we  legislate  it  to  be !  Not  long  since,  labor 
reformers  proposed  what  was  called  a  "  labor-cur- 
rency," to  be  substituted  for  gold  and  silver,  as  well 
as  for  bank-notes  supposed  to  represent  specie,  be- 
cause incapable  of  being  made  like  these,  the  material 
of  monopoly  and  speculation.  The  circulating  me- 
dium recognized  in  all  the  markets  of  the  world  was 
to  be  set  aside  for  legal-tender  "  certificates  of  ser- 
vice," or  "  free  money,  based  on  commodities  to  be 
furnished  anywhere  at  cost ;  "  as  if  such  ambiguities 
of  phrase  and  arbitrary  processes  could  suggest  any 
guarantee  for  a  circulating  medium,  or  such  narrow 
theories  of  its  representative  value  answer  the  de- 
mands of  trade.  What  "commodities"  may  mean 
in  the  dialect  of  our  labor  parties  it  may  be  possible 
in  some  degree  to  imagine;  but  how  should  a  cur- 
rency of  commodity-notes,  from  free  banks  or  else- 
where, help  abolish  monopoly  and  speculation  ?  The 
whole  basis  of  the  expectation  must  lie  in  assuming  a 
superior  virtue  in  the  control  of  the  circulating  me- 
dium by  a  commodity-making  class,  in  comparison 
with  all  owners  of  surplus  means  under  the  present 
forms  of  currency.  Alas !  the  real  problem  is  a 
deeper  one:  how  to  free  labor  in  all  forms  from  the 
spirit  of  monopoly  and  over-speculation.  It  is  but 
an  aggravation  of  the  general  misery  to  invite  us  to 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.     301 

escape  these  vices  by  assuming  that  the  direct  pro- 
ducer of  material  commodities  alone  is  free  from 
them,  and  that  he  has  exclusive  mission  to  expel 
them  by  political  enactment  from  those  whom  he  re- 
gards as  outside  of  his  class. 

The  National  Labor  Programme  follows  up  its 
very  just  demands  for  the  prohibition  of  monopolies, 
with  a  call  for  enactments  against  *'  importing  coolies 
or  other  servile  labor."  In  the  actual  absence  of 
any  such  importation,  the  meaning  manifestly  is  that 
Chinese  cheap  labor  should  be  excluded  by  law ;  in 
other  words,  that  a  monopoly  should  at  once  be  se- 
cured in  behalf  of  native  workmen  as  against  this 
kind  of  immigration.  And  this  proceeds  upon  the 
ground  that  men  cannot  sell  their  labor  at  a  cheaper 
rate  than  labor  parties  dictate  without  being  slaves, 
and  that  strangers  should  have  no  share  in  the  oppor- 
tunity to  learn  by  their  own  experience  the  American 
arts  of  raising  wages  and  shortening  times  of  labor. 
Similar  measures  against  immigrant  labor  are  being 
inaugurated  by  the  English  labor  reformers,  in  defi- 
ance of  their  own  long-cherished  theories  of  free 
trade.  When  American  legislation,  we  care  not  in 
whose  interest,  or  at  whose  dictation,  yields  itself  to 
this  exclusive  policy  towards  industrious  immigrants, 
it  will  have  proved  false  to  the  cosmopolitan  faith 
which  has  hitherto  distinguished  us  as  the  nation  of 
nations,  and  built  up  our  noblest  traditions  and  hopes. 
Let  the  old  world's  experience  of  shutting  out  whole 
classes  from  the  free  competitions  of  labor  suffice. 
And  let  us  be  duly  watchful  against  admitting  as 
representative  of  the  real  interests  of  productive  in- 
dustry the  efforts  of  special  parties  to  subject  its  free 
movement  to  excessive  governmental  regulation,  in 


302     LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

their  own  behalf.  We  have  had  warning  of  what 
may  be  done  even  in  the  name  of  the  rights  of  labor, 
in  the  shameful  disqualifications  that  have  been  im- 
posed upon  the  Chinese  in  California.  One  more 
illustration  may  suffice. 

In  the  whole  scheme  for  enfranchising  the  working 
class  proposed  by  the  National  Labor  Congress  there 
is  not  one  syllable  that  breathes  of  encouraging  wo- 
man in  the  free  choice  of  occupation,  or  of  securing 
equal  pay  to  both  sexes  for  equal  service.  This  great 
social  duty  may  well  have  been  left  out  of  the  po- 
litical programme  on  account  of  its  manifestly  lying 
beyond  the  sphere  of  law,  —  though  an  amendment 
giving  suffrage  to  women  might  deserve  to  have  been 
mentioned  as  likely  to  facilitate  the  performance  of 
it.  Its  absence  from  the  Declaration  of  Principles 
also  is  good  evidence  how  entirely  the  movement,  as 
now  pursued,  is  absorbed  in  the  ambition  for  purely 
political  management  of  the  industrial  interests  of 
the  country.^ 

Is  absolutism  organized  by  the  State  any  better  for 
labor  than  it  is  for  religion?     Yet  even  a  republic 

1  Resolutions  passed  by  a  State  Convention  of  the  Labor  Party, 
held  at  P'ramingham,  Mass.,  while  this  article  was  in  press,  deserve 
notice  as  a  local  movement  in  behalf  of  the  political  and  industrial 
rights  of  woman.  The  demand  for  these  rights  has  reached  a  degree 
of  recognition  in  this  State,  which  enables  it  to  command  more  or 
less  respect  from  all  political  parties.  But  the  facts  relating  to  the 
National  Labor  Movement  remain  as  above  stated.  There  are  many- 
good  elements  in  these  Framingham  resolutions ;  but  we  are  far  from 
indorsing  their  extreme  statement  that  labor,  in  their  sense  of  the 
word,  is  "  the  creator  of  all  wealth ;  "  or  their  internecine  war  on 
wages,  involving,  as  it  would,  not  only  the  overthrow  of  certain  un- 
just or  degrading  conditions  of  labor  service  merely,  but  actual  pro- 
hibition by  law  of  that  free  determination  in  what  form  one  shall 
sell  his  labor  to  others,  which  is  the  proper  meaning  of  a  contract  for 
wases. 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      303 

may  be  drifting  towards  it.  It  is  a  grave  error  to 
forget  the  natural  limits  to  the  power  of  laws  in  de- 
termining the  relations  of  industry.  But  it  is  a  much 
graver  error  to  give  over  the  cause  of  labor  to  that 
kind  of  personal  management  by  which  political  or- 
ganizations secure  victory  and  spoils ;  to  get  up  a 
new  political  party  to  supplant  existing  ones,  upon 
every  issue  that  arises  between  the  industrial  ele- 
ments ;  to  expend  the  force  that  should  be  employed 
in  cooperative  movements  upon  the  broadest  basis  of 
sympathy,  in  feeding  political  ambitions,  substituting 
personalities  for  principles,  and  heaping  the  fuel  of 
party  bitterness  upon  every  smouldering  ember  of 
discord  in  factory  and  shop.  It  is  of  course  easy  to 
demand  indignantly,  if  labor  is  to  be  denied  the  com- 
mon right  of  political  combination  to  make  laws  for 
its  own  protection.  The  answer  is  that  the  question 
is  absurd.  Labor  is  no  abstract,  distinct  interest  of 
this  kind.  It  is  the  universal  life  —  the  people  them- 
selves in  their  productive  energy — and  every  time 
the  people  go  to  the  ballot-box  they  express  their 
will,  more  or  less  wisely,  concerning  its  interests. 
This  is  the  constant  fact,  this  the  whole  meaning  of 
American  politics,  and  no  believer  in  our  institutions 
would  think  of  disparaging  it ;  though  they  certainly 
come  near  to  doing  so,  whose  notions  of  "  a  laboring 
class"  contract  their  definition  of  labor  within  arbi- 
trary limits.  But  this  is  what  we  do  believe.  The 
genuine  appeal  of  labor  to  political  action  in  a  free 
community  will  be  known  by  the  people's  speaking 
in  some  consentient  and  normal  way,  as  having  com- 
mon interests,  of  which  it  must  not  be  supposed  as  a 
whole  to  be  either  ignorant  or  regardless.  In  other 
words,  its  great  political  bodies  will  include  the  great 


304      LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

mass  of  producers;  are,  indeed,  mainly  made  up  of 
such ;  and,  in  the  main,  will  naturally  represent  the 
people's  instinctive  good  sense,  as  to  what  can  and 
what  cannot  be  accomplished  for  the  right  organiza- 
tion of  labor  by  political  methods.  So  that  a  party 
which  has  to  be  worked  up  outside  and  against  them, 
yet  on  issues  that  cannot  but  have  been  familiar  al- 
ready to  these  free  voting  masses,  gives  but  slight 
promise  of  reporting  the  real  demands  of  labor.  An 
utterly  impoverished  and  neglected  class  must  indeed 
get  its  claims  stated  in  whatever  way  is  possible  for  it. 
But  our  labor-reform  parties  do  not  represent  this 
advocacy  of  some  distinctive  stratum  which  politics 
has  forgotten  ;  they  are  not  pleading  for  a  dumb,  dis- 
franchised race,  for  slaves,  shut  out  from  all  political 
hearing  by  national  constitution  and  local  law,  —  and 
certainly  all  labor  claims  hut  such  as  these  can  more 
readily  get  political  recognition  and  power  by  inspir- 
ing the  best  among  the  great  lines  of  public  move- 
ment than  by  acting  as  the  foe  of  all.  But  it  must 
be  said  further  of  such  parties  as  have  been  described, 
that  their  conditions  fit  them  much  less  for  real  ser- 
vice to  labor,  as  a  whole,  than  for  adding  complica- 
tions of  intrigue  and  strife.  Believe  as  we  may  that 
the  sway  of  capital  over  industrial  machinery  is  grind- 
ing the  workman  into  dust,  your  labor  party  must 
prove  to  us  that  its  own  passion  for  managing  poliU 
ieal  machinery  is  serving  him  any  better.  It  must 
tell  us  what  good  fruit  is  to  be  reaped  by  transform- 
ing the  whole  labor  question  into  an  open  path  for 
the  reckless  personalities  and  flatteries  of  the  dema- 
gogue on  his  foray,  —  a  vantage  ground  for  working 
upon  blind  suspicions  and  desires,  whether  by  crusad- 
ing against  the  public  creditor  and   the  owner   of 


LAEOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.     305 

capital  as  public  enemies,  or  by  promising  to  make 
"poverty  impossible"  by  laws  enforcing  high  pay 
and  short  hours. 

The  theory,  for  instance,  of  a  gigantic  combination 
of  capital  as  such  to  oppress  and  enslave  labor,  be- 
comes in  the  hands  of  political  management  quite  as 
gigantic  a  power  for  working  up  personal  detraction 
and  the  misery  of  social  distrust.  Yet  all  the  reck- 
less suppression  of  the  weak  by  the  strong  inherent 
in  business  methods,  and  all  the  rapacity  of  incor- 
porated money  power  when  fully  recognized,  fails  to 
warrant  the  theory  itself.  As  commonly  put,  it  can- 
not be  shown  to  be  other  than  pure  delusion.  It 
would  seem  difficult  to  ignore  more  thoroughly  the 
position  which  labor  actually  holds  in  our  civilization 
than  they  do  who  are  continually  exploiting  this 
theory.  That  there  are  indeed  whole  classes  in  its 
best  centres  requiring  instant  protection,  personal, 
political,  social,  against  unscrupulous  systems  and 
masters,  should  be  plain  enough  to  all :  we  advise 
every  doubter  of  this  to  read  without  delay  the  facts 
and  statistics  brought  out  by  the  recent  impressive 
Report  of  the  Massachusetts  Labor  Bureau.  But  it 
is  equally  plain  that  laboring  men  as  such  are  in  this 
country  neither  discredited  by  custom,  nor  discour- 
aged by  legal  disqualification.  Industry  is  in  honor 
such  as  it  never  had  in  any  land  or  age.  There  is 
not  a  township  in  New  England  that  does  not  shine 
with  tokens  of  its  large  rewards  to  farmer  and  me- 
chanic. A  man  has  not  less  but  more  prestige  for 
belonging  to  the  people ;  and  to  have  been  broadly 
educated,  or  to  be  -very  wealthy,  is  actually,  other 
things  being  equal,  a  disadvantage  in  the  race  for 
public  honors   in  comparison  with   having   labored 

20 


306     LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

with  the  hands  for  daily  bread.  Labor  systematic- 
ally oppressed  in  a  country  wliither  the  poor  of  all 
nations  are  fleeing  in  flocks  from  the  caste  systems 
of  the  Old  World  !  Labor  systematically  victimized 
in  a  country  where  it  has  such  perfect  liberty  of  as- 
sociation and  such  success  in  self-protection  as  to  have 
rendered  all  separation  of  it  from  capital,  even  in 
speech,  a  self  -  contradiction :  where,  as  numerical 
force,  it  is  itself  public  sentiment  and  court  of  ap- 
peal, and  capable  of  prosperity  in  exact  proportion 
to  its  own  self-respect !  The  industry  of  such  a  land 
is  essentially  one  cause  with  social  order  and  prog- 
ress, with  morality  and  religion,  with  every  instinct 
of  humanity.  And  the  labor  movement  that  recog- 
nizes this  breadth  of  function,  not  seeking  the  ag- 
grandizement of  a  special  body,  nor  imitating  the 
exclusiveness  of  feudal  guilds,  but  clothing  itself  in 
large  and  free  cooperation  for  the  removal  of  all  ob- 
stacles to  honest  self-support,  in  fact  appeals  to  sym- 
pathies that  move  through  all  paths  and  conditions : 
it  will  find  the  common  atmosphere  of  social  life  it- 
self at  its  command,  as  a  freely  conducting  medium. 
How  should  capitalists  plan  or  even  hope  to  hinder 
the  prosperous  development  of  such  a  force  ?  It  is 
impossible  that  its  drawbacks  should  lie  anywhere 
but  in  motive  forces  that  operate  in  the  mass  of  men, 
without  regard  to  class  or  function.  They  are  no 
more  referable  to  capital  as  such  than  to  labor  as 
such.  And  all  agitation  is  blind  and  wasteful  till  it 
is  recognized  that  there  is  not  and  cannot  be  in  these 
old  free  States  to-day  any  general  systematic  attempt 
or  hope  to  enslave  labor  as  such  ;  that  there  is  only 
the  eager  passion  of  men  who  have  much  for  making 
more,  and  of  men  who  have  less  to  have  as  much  as 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      307 

they  ;  that  this,  the  unbridled  rage  in  all  spheres  and 
occupations,  is  what  now  breeds,  and  what  would 
breed,  under  the  best  organized  scheme  for  control- 
ling capital  any  reformer  can  devise,  whatever  mis- 
eries now  befall  honest  labor.  This  is  the  Ishmaelite, 
to  whom  capital  and  labor  alike  are  free  spoil,  and 
who  snaps  his  fingers  at  all  laws  and  guarantees. 
He  wars  on  no  one  class  more  than  on  another ;  he 
simply  pillages  society  in  the  right  of  the  stronger. 
It  is  foolish  to  mistake  this  unchartered  enemy  for 
the  intentional  plot  of  a  capitalist  class  against  labor. 
The  master  who  pays  his  workman  the  lowest  pittance, 
or  tries  to  control  his  vote  b}^  driving  him  out  of  em- 
ploy, has  no  special  war  against  labor  as  such.  Will 
he  not  starve  out  his  fellow-capitalists  as  well,  or 
swallow  them  up  as  readily  as  he  does  his  workmen, 
when  they  stand  in  his  way  ?  And  as  for  those,  on 
the  other  hand,  who  would  have  capital  stripped  of 
all  opportunity  and  control,  and  brought  under  the 
rule  of  manual  labor  as  the  only  productive  force,  and 
as  entitled  to  all  the  fruits  of  production,  —  what 
would  they  too  be  likely  to  do  with  the  rights  of 
weaker  laboring  men,  could  they  thus  despoil  prop- 
erty and  wield  its  powers  ?  Their  cry  of  ''  Down 
with  capital "  is  the  raving  of  men  befooled  by  the 
very  greed  they  charge  all  capital  with,  organizing 
for  their  destruction.  What  but  mischief  comes  of 
blind  choice  and  blind  rejection,  "Down  with  this," 
and  "  Up  with  that,"  impelled  by  the  fiercest  of  des- 
pots that  can  sway  manners  and  wield  the  liberties 
and  laws  ? 

The  interests  of  labor  can  be  advanced  only  by 
what  is  done  in  the  interest  of  the  whole  of  society, 
and  with  fair  estimation  of  all  the  elements  of  pro- 


308      LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

ductive  movement.  It  is  to  be  presumed  that  with 
the  exception  of  those  who  live  by  speculating  in 
fictitious  values,  or  who  live  as  mere  drones  by  the 
toil  of  others,  the  only  unproductive  classes, — every- 
body is  more  or  less  sensitive  to  the  status  of  labor, 
and  feels,  more  or  less  consciously,  the  harm  that  be- 
falls every  component  force  in  the  process  of  industry. 
No  abuses  in  the  supposed  interest  either  of  accumu- 
lated wealth  or  of  manual  labor  can  give  just  ground 
for  disparaging  the  public  uses  that  flow  from  both 
these  elements.  The  broadest  appreciation  of  uses 
alone  can  correct  all  abuse  ;  a  reconciling  spirit  whose 
war  is  only  against  the  common  foe. 

Schemes,  for  instance,  to  drive  large  capitalists 
out  of  any  fair  field  of  employment  for  wealth,  or  ar- 
tificially to  bar  out  labor  that  seeks  that  field,  do  not 
solve  the  problem  of  false  proportion  between  the 
price  of  food  and  the  price  of  labor.  Our  help  must 
come  from  the  science  and  the  experience  that  can 
make  it  clear  to  all  reasonable  persons,  how  mischiev- 
ous to  the  whole  community  are  railroad  monopolies 
and  food  speculations,  holding  back  products  from 
their  natural  markets,  enormously  raising  their  cost  to 
the  consumer ;  high  tariffs  that  enhance  the  cost  of 
production,  and  so  diminish  the  market  for  the  prod- 
uct; large  land  grants  to  monopolists ;  general  over- 
trading, stimulated  by  the  powers  of  machinery  into 
such  fluctuation  of  prices  as  to  drive  all  profit  from 
the  channel  of  fair  distribution,  into  that  of  self-pres- 
ervation in  the  competitive  strife ;  dishonest  trading 
by  stock  or  gold  gamblers,  in  the  hopes  and  fears 
of  all  classes ;  and  the  want  of  cooperation  among 
laborers  to  hold  and  work  capital  equitably,  and  to 
educate   labor  to  a  skill  which   shall   command,  as 


LABOR   PARTIES  AND   LABOR  REFORM.  309 

skilled  labor  always  will,  a  high  reward.  And  these 
real  causes  of  the  false  relations  between  the  prices 
of  food  and  labor  being  duly  recognized,  the  cure 
comes  in  a  common  effort,  wisely  distinguishing  what 
can  come  by  legislation  from  what  cannot,  to  remove 
them  as  foes  to  the  common  good  ;  not  as  if  a  labor- 
ing class  only  were  ordained  to  get  the  benefit  of  the 
reform,  nor  with  the  aim  to  put  down,  or  to  despoil, 
any  of  those  elements  on  which  all  depend.  By 
this  spirit,  which  we  "believe  is  destined  to  work  its 
way  to  triumph,  the  scope  of  industrial  reform  will 
be  widened  to  match  the  magnitude  of  the  evils  that 
now  threaten  us.  It  will  tell  alike  on  laborer  and 
money-holder,  in  ethical  as  well  as  in  political  direc- 
tions. Its  programmes  will  not  stop  in  schemes  for 
enforcing  short  hours  and  high  wages  for  those  who 
are  already  employed  upon  terms  that  give  them 
vantage  to  demand  better :  they  will  look  to  the 
starvation  wages  of  thousands  of  sewing-women,  and 
the  miserable  pay  of  female  labor  generally  ;  to  the 
friendlessness  of  young  immigrants  into  cities  where 
labor  is  uncertain  and  fluctuating ;  to  the  threaten- 
ing increase  of  the  sum  of  ignorance,  intemperance, 
and  squalid  living.  It  will  pursue  and  punish  the 
reckless  disregard  of  physiological  laws  which  packs 
laborers  into  unventilated  rooms  or  exhausts  them 
in  unhealthy  forms  of  toil,  or  exposes  them  to  per- 
ilous surroundings  without  such  precautions  against 
disaster  as  science  can  afford.  It  will  bring  to  bear 
on  the  murderous  dens  of  drunkenness  and  infamy 
that  flourish  under  the  assaults  of  law,  the  infinitely 
stronger  batteries  of  labor  as  a  public  sentiment  and 
a  personal  force  of  example  and  of  aid.  It  will 
make  war  upon  ignorance  of  physical  and  econom- 


310     LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

ical  laws,  upon  loose,  unhealthy,  wasteful  habits ; 
upon  the  un thrift  that  is  the  father  of  vice  and  the 
dupe  of  political  jugglery.  It  will  stop  the  shameless 
gains  of  tenement  speculators  by  providing  cheap 
and  healthy  lodging-houses  for  the  poor,  opening 
easy  paths  to  the  ownership  of  real  estate.  It  will 
press  everywhere  the  claims  of  home ;  and  facilitate 
in  every  way  the  taste  for  those  domestic  duties  and 
interests  that  lead  men  to  steady  work  and  steady 
saving ;  and  propagate  the  ambition,  not  to  break 
down  capital  as  a  fraud  and  a  foe,  but  to  possess  it 
as  the  means  of  personal  culture  and  public  service. 
And  in  view  of  an  unprecedented  political  corruption 
which  no  mere  party  changes  can  improve,  it  will 
insist  on  making  oflB.ce  the  permanent  reward  of 
worth  and  fitness  instead  of  the  carcass  for  unclean 
creatures  to  prey  on,  to  the  nation's  undoing.  It 
will  understand  that  of  all  follies  there  can  be  none 
greater  than  that  of  intrusting  the  task  to  ofi&ce- 
seekers  who  skillfully  work  up  the  public  sense  of 
ofl&cial  misconduct,  loudly  proclaiming  their  own  all- 
sufl&ciency  ;  and  whose  sweeping  assaults  on  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  people  are  of  course  mere  con- 
tumely of  the  people  themselves.  For  this  is  but  to 
call  on  Scylla  to  save  us  from  Charybdis.  That  well- 
meaning  reformers  should  vote  men  into  ofl&ce  whom 
they  do  not  respect,  in  the  belief  that  their  abilities 
can  thus  be  made  available,  and  that  policy  alone 
will  bind  them  to  prefer  the  public  good  to  schemes 
of  private  ambition,  —  is  sheer  trifling  with  the  life 
of  the  State.  How  can  there  be  any  more  public 
security  than  there  is  private  virtue,  known  and 
trusted  with  affairs  ?  If  you  cann9t  find  this,  and 
must   commit   yourselves  to  the  chances  of   politic 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      311 

good  behavior  from  the  opposite  quality,  it  is  a  con- 
fession that  all  is  lost.  They  who  teach  that  the 
question  of  the  motives  and  convictions  of  a  candi- 
date is  of  small  account  compared  with  his  probable 
uses  for  a  particular  end,  because  we  are  not  to  look 
for  saints  in  politics,  demoralize  all  who  believe 
them,  and  deal  death  to  those  ideals  on  which  our 
liberty  depends.  God  may  utilize  all  qualities. 
But  is  the  political  manager  "  a  special  providence  " 
to  save  the  nation,  after  he  has  taught  it  not  to  in- 
quire what  men  purpose,  if  they  will  but  promise  to 
execute  its  will  ? 

The  ideal  aim  of  labor  is  to  identify  itself  with 
every  form  of  personal  and  public  culture  ;  to  repre- 
sent the  fullness  of  productive  life ;  the  brain  and 
heart  and  arm  of  civilization.  It  is  worse  than  time 
wasted  to  classify  the  friends  and  foes  of  this  work 
by  parties  or  programmes  :  the  point  of  moment  is 
the  quality  of  individual  life.  Justice  to  labor  is 
the  finest  of  the  fine  arts;  the  art  of  justice  itself, 
and  honor  and  love ;  it  is  large  appreciation  and 
faithful  performance  ;  the  art  of  loyalty  to  the  best 
and  of  service  to  the  whole.  It  is  the  light  that  sees 
and  the  love  that  shares.  What  signify  political 
combinations  beyond  the  amount  they  contain  of 
that  true  personality  in  men  and  women,  which 
alone  renders  the  social  atmosphere  fit  for  breathing? 
To  what  end  will  you  concentrate  rapacity  and  mul- 
tiply waters  of  bitterness  ?  It  is  no  less  than  crime 
in  labor  reformers  to  promise  their  followers  immense 
gains  from  laws  and  regulations  about  labor,  while 
yet  never  daring  to  tell  them  plainly  that  there  shall 
be  no  more  relief  to  the  poor  in  demanding  and  mak- 
ing such  laws  than  what  they  themselves  render  pos- 


312      LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM. 

sible  by  their  contribution  of  qualities  which  political 
management  or  class  ascendency  cannot  give.  In 
the  interest  of  the  whole,  let  it  be  insisted  that  our 
republican  watchword,  "  The  dignity  of  labor,"  shall 
have  rational  meaning.  And  let  us  stand  at  the 
outset  upon  this  conviction.  Crass  ignorance,  exclu- 
siveness  in  rich  or  poor,  democratic  or  aristocratic  ; 
coarse  and  sensual  habits ;  the  arts  of  demagogues, 
and  that  love  of  flattery  and  worship  of  noisy  self- 
assumption  which  gives  them  following  ;  a  blind  an- 
tagonism to  whatever  commands  special  advantages 
in  the  competition  for  wealth,  —  all  ways,  in  short, 
that  unfit  for  appreciating  a  generous  culture  of  the 
tastes  and  sympathies,  and  for  respecting,  even  if 
one  does  not  understand,  the  functions  of  art,  sci- 
ence, religion,  discredit  one's  cry  for  "  honor  to  la- 
bor," and  for  "  the  rights  of  labor,"  and  unfit  him 
to  stand  as  its  champion  or  to  advocate  its  cause. 

The  large  and  free  recognition  of  uses,  visible  and 
invisible,  moral,  intellectual,  social,  and  on  one  level 
for  both  sexes  and  every  race,  is  labor's  true  capital, 
and  capital's  real  labor.  Issue  this  currency  far  and 
wide  ;  it  will  not  depreciate,  like  greenbacks,  by  in- 
crease ;  it  will  not  heap  like  gold  in  gambling  and 
monopoly.  Maintain  this  sole  guarantee  of  personal 
freedom  and  culture,  amidst  the  mechanism  of  con- 
solidation, which,  without  it,  would  suppress  them 
altogether.  Join  hands,  all  parties,  on  this,  the  edu- 
cation of  a  free  people  to  the  spirit  that  civilizes, 
not  barbarizes ;  lifting  the  weak  and  blind  with  all 
the  leverage  of  its  united  vision  and  strength,  and 
calling  forth  every  brain  and  hand  to  the  self-sup- 
porting work  that  redeems  and  dignifies  man. 

Let  me  say  in  closing  that  I  hold  free  labor  in 


LABOR  PARTIES  AND  LABOR  REFORM.      313 

America  to  be  the  true  emancipation  of  religion. 
It  has  nobler  function  than  to  subserve  the  blind  de- 
structive reaction  on  all  intuition  and  faith,  against 
whose  leadership  the  great  soul  of  Mazzini  was 
obliged  to  warn  the  labor  reformers  in  his  Young 
Italy.  It  means  what  America  means,  —  not  an 
enforced  labor  creed,  but  the  integral  culture  of  hu- 
manity. To  honor  constructive  labor  is  to  associate 
the  normal  exercise  of  every  faculty  with  what  de- 
serves highest  honor ;  in  other  words,  with  religion. 
And  so  religion  becomes  natural,  human,  unmonop- 
olized,  secular.  It  teaches  man  no  longer  the  old 
self-contempt  as  a  gift  by  supernatural  grafting,  or 
miraculous  interference,  or  by  special  mediatorial 
book,  church,  sect,  seasons,  forms  that  disparage  life 
itself ;  but  self-respect  as  the  voice  of  his  familiar  in- 
stincts, insights,  energies,  in  the  constancy  of  uni- 
versal law.  What  could  effect  such  deliverance  but 
free  labor's  endowment  of  the  whole  human  capacity 
with  a  sacred  purpose  and  authority  ?  "  My  Father 
worketh  hitherto  and  I  work,"  says  the  Jesus  of 
John.  That  is  very  grand  :  nothing  perhaps  grander 
in  the  New  Testament.  But  this  is  grander  still,  — 
for  man  to  say,  as  man,  as  a  people,  as  human  fac- 
ulty in  the  broadest  application,  "  God  worketh  and 
I  work. "  Make  religion  as  broad,  as  practical,  as 
natural  as  labor,  and  religion  for  the  first  time  in 
history  stands  on  universal  principles,  and  humanity 
can  become  one  with  God. 


THE  LAW  OF  THE  BLESSED  LIFE. 


OliTE  of  the  profoundest  thinkers  and  noblest  men 
of  modern  times,  the  German  Fichte,  has  said,  "  Will 
to  be  what  thou  oughtest  to  be,  what  thou  canst  be, 
and  what  therefore  thou  wilt  be  :  —  this  is  the  law  of 
the  Higher  Morality  as  well  as  of  the  Blessed  Life." 

Here  is  one  of  the  immortal  texts  in  that  larger 
Bible  of  humanity,  of  which  no  race  monopolizes  the 
making,  and  whose  canon  is  never  closed.  We  will 
try  to  find  to-day  what  it  reports  about  the  substance 
of  character. 

Far  down  in  the  foundations,  beyond  dogmas,  be- 
yond all  methods  and  procedures  of  religious  train- 
ing, lies  the  question  of  natural  religion  :  ''  Have  you 
resolved  to  be  what  you  ought  to  be,  what  it  is  be- 
coming to  be?  " 

The  beginning  of  all  faith  and  of  all  ethics, — this 
alone  is  indispensable.  We  are  not  blindly  to  insist 
that  all  shall  find  the  same  spiritual  path.  One 
shall  have  his  agonies  and  convulsions ;  another 
shall  grow  by  insensible  renewals  and  perpetual  new 
birth  like  the  unfolding  of  a  tender  germ  into  a 
stately  flower,  or  a  broad-domed  tree.  We  must 
recognize  that  Wisdom  which  treats  the  state  of 
human  character  as  aptly  as  Nature  clothes  the  sen- 
sitive seed,  but  lays  bare  the  tougher  spore.     But 


THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE.  315 

there  is  one  universal  necessity.  Never  in  this  world 
did  life  open  into  reality  for  any  one  till  duty  be- 
came commanding  to  the  will. 

The  preacher  preaches  on  the  fallacy  of  the  max- 
im, "Act  right  and  all  will  come  right."  "Not  at 
all,"  says  he.  "  It  is  all  vain  without  faith  in  the 
atonement."  But  he  does  not  show  that  character 
has  any  necessary  connection  with  that  faith,  because 
he  cannot.  Is  it  not  plain  that  a  religion,  which 
floods  the  land  with  its  Bibles,  tracts,  magazines, 
conventions,  and  has  its  armies  of  professors,  and  yet 
has  to  acknowledge  that  living  rightly  is  in  no  sense 
its  prime  condition  of  salvation,  is  lacking  in  some 
fundamental  element  of  spiritual  power  ?  Mani- 
festly. 

There  is  not  a  step  in  the  popular  processes  of 
conversion  and  salvation  which  may  not  be  got  by, 
without  once  willing  that,  conie  what  may,  one  will  be 
what  he  ought  to  be,  what  it  is  becoming  for  him  to 
be.  The  pure  and  simple  principle  of  duty,  as  duty, 
has  properly  no  place  in  the  scheme.  It  contemptu- 
ously supplants  natural  religion,  as  if  one  might 
boast  of  cutting  off  his  own  legs  and  arms,  that  he 
might  the  better  use  wax  wings  tied  on  his  shoulders. 

How  often  a  truth  seems  commonplace  just  be- 
cause it  has  not  been  looked  in  the  face  squarely,  so 
as  to  be  recognized,  at  all.  It  is  the  rarest  thing  to 
be  simple  and  see  directly  into  the  heart  of  things. 
For  the  question  with  that  popular  process  is,  "  What 
shall  I  do  to  be  saved?  "  The  command  of  the  moral 
being  is,  "  Will  to  be  what  thou  oughtest  to  be." 
How  vast  the  difference !  Personal  interest  there, 
impersonal  reverence  for  duty  here.  While  one  is 
bent  on  what  is  called  securing  an  interest  in  salva- 


316  THE  LAW  OF   THE   BLESSED  LIFE. 

tion,  absolutely  he  does  not  as  yet  realize  what  the 
word  duty  means.  He  is  still  in  the  "  beggarly 
elements."  Duty  means  the  essential  allegiance  of 
the  man  to  his  own  proper  integrity  as  in  accord 
with  the  spiritual  universe.  What  the  consequence 
of  following  the  right  with  loyalty  may  be,  it  may 
not  know  nor  ask.  "  There  is  a  sweet  and  holy 
blindness  in  its  love,  even  as  there  is  a  blindness  of 
life,  yea,  and  of  genius,  in  moments  of  productive 
energy." 

"  Stern  Lawgiver  !    Yet  thou  dost  wear 
The  Godhead's  most  benignant  grace ; 
Nor  know  we  anything  so  fair 
As  is  the  smile  upon  thy  face; 
Flowers  laugh  before  thee  on  their  beds ; 
And  fragrance  in  thy  footstep  treads ; 
Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong  ; 
And  the  most  ancient  heavens,  through  thee,  are  fresh 
and  strong." 

To  save  their  souls,  men  will  grovel  before  a  wrath 
that  would  destroy  them  ;  perhaps  they  are  doing 
what  their  condition  prompts.  But  he  who  sets  this 
up  as  the  normal  rule  for  spiritual  growth,  simply 
shuts  out  from  men  beforehand  the  living  counte- 
nance of  duty  itself.  One  may  abominate  himself  to 
the  top  of  his  doctrinal  bent,  but  self-contempt  shall 
be  self-contempt  still.  Nothing  shall  come  of  him 
till  he  begins  to  respect  himself,  and  the  natural  re- 
sources on  which  he  is  to  draw  for  better  living. 

If  there  can  be  no  inspiration  in  the  thought  of 
the  vileness,  or  impotence  of  one's  nature,  neither  is 
the  next  step  in  the  popular  process  of  religious  cul- 
ture, faith  in  a  prescribed  personal  authority,  a  rec- 
ognition of  duty.  It  abolishes  the  liberty  on  which 
duty  rests.     "  I  will  "  has  nothing  to  do  with  "  thou 


i 


THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE.  317 

shalt " !  To  will  means  distinctly  and  definitely, 
"not  to  be  compelled,"  but  to  act  voluntarily.  Moral 
volition  comes  when  one  undertakes  to  be  loyal  to  the 
law  of  spiritual  being  as  the  liberty  of  his  own  human 
being;  when  he  looks  beyond  his  own  interests  to 
what  is  right  and  fit  in  itself  and  therefore  in  him,  — 
to  what  is  presented  to  his  free  mind  independently 
of  prescribed  plan  or  ofiicial  authority,  past  or  present. 
It  is  unworthy  of  a  thoughtful  mind  to  echo  the  old 
dictum,  that  Judaism  is  the  law  of  bondage,  and 
Christianity  the  gospel  of  liberty,  though  the  latter 
may  be  a  step  to  it.  The  gospel  of  liberty  knows 
no  prescribed  name  nor  organized  confession. 

The  questions  with  which  authoritative  theology 
bids  one  occupy  his  mind  are  these  two  :  "  What 
shall  I  believe,"  and  "What  shall  I  do ?  "  The  law 
of  duty  goes  deeper  and  demands,  "  What  ought  I 
to  be  ?  " 

The  conscience  involved  in  thinking  about  what 
one  ought  to  do  is  rudimentary  only:  made  the  per- 
manent and  supreme  rule  for  life,  it  yields  but  the 
mole's  eye,  groping  along  from  point  to  point  with 
the  sight  which  takes  note  where  one  is,  what  is 
about  one,  and  what  the  business  of  motion  properly 
is.  It  comes  as  near  as  we  can  get  to  the  Darwinian 
idea  of  a  moral  sense,  namely,  an  accumulation  of 
judgments  about  phenomena. 

It  is  always  busy  with  this  or  that  particular  obli- 
gation to-day,  to-morrow,  as  the  theological  convert  is 
busy  in  complying  seriatim  with  the  terms  of  salva- 
tion ;  but  what  the  true  test  of  duty  itself  may  be, 
what  shall  save  one  from  making  obligations  out  of 
points  of  taste,  desire,  interest,  prejudice,  fear,  super- 
stition, —  this  wants,  first  of  all,  an  eye  for  being,  for 


318  THE   LAW  OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE. 

the  substance  of  character,  not  a  zeal  for  doing.  It 
wants  a  rounded  organ  of  vision,  wide  open,  looking 
straight  at  life  as  a  whole. 

The  items  of  conduct  are  ciphers.  What  a  differ- 
ence it  makes  whether  you  run  your  ciphers  on  at 
the  right  of  the  unit  or  set  them  down  without  the 
unit !  The  unit  is  being,  character,  personality. 
To  have  a  thirst  for  what  is  real,  that  will  not  be 
satisfied  with  mere  doing  or  appearing,  and  cares 
only  for  having  the  substance  of  life,  in  place  of 
shadow  and  phantasm,  —  this  is  all  that  makes  the 
busiest  work  tell.  What  are  mere  heaps  of  things 
done  ?  What  is  all  this  running,  shouting,  and  ply- 
ing the  hands  up  and  down  ?  We  are  all  the  time 
doing;  we  all  fill  up  time  somehow,  if  it  be  only, 
as  it  often  enough  is,  to  tangle  up  the  skein  of  our 
lives  with  the  hurry  of  winding.  But  if  we  float 
on  the  mere  stream  of  these  details,  even  of  what  is 
called  "doing  good,"  we  are  mere  running  streams, 
not  persons,  at  all.  The  fair  bargains,  civil  behav- 
iors, the  almsgivings,  organized  charities,  essential 
parts  of  civilization  itself,  may,  so  far  as  concerns 
personal  being,  be  mere  mechanism  in  social  machin- 
ery. What  is  called  "  working  Christianity "  runs 
into  this  exaction  of  special  demands,  this  mechanical 
multiplicity  that  crazes  the  brain,  unfitting  it  for 
thinking  clearly  and  freely,  and  corrupts  the  motive 
with  its  competitive  statistics  of  doings ;  measuring 
virtue  by  the  yard-stick  of  popularity  and  numbers, 
enslaving  character  one  wa}^  to  carry  its  good  ob- 
jects another,  as  your  great  fairs  institute  gambling 
to  feed  hungry  mouths. 

One  action  that  springs  from  the  will  to  be  what 
is  becoming,  is  the  descent  of  a  higher  life  into  this 


THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE.  319 

mass  of  managing  virtuosity ;  our  Adam  stands 
among  the  dead  stones  and  dumb  creatures ;  and  with 
the  birth  of  the  Man,  the  world  and  what  is  therein 
begin  to  be  named  and  judged,  and  to  have  their  real 
estimates  and  uses.  It  is  instantly  revealed  how 
much  or  little  of  this  conformity  and  this  mechanism 
in  the  details  of  conduct  lacks  the  moral  values. 

Shall  we  not  say  this  ;  —  we  get  no  true  character 
till  we  have  learned  definitely  to  choose  between  be- 
ing and  seeing,  and  to  wait  till  time  and  the  logic  of 
events  shall  justify  us  in  eyes  which  perhaps  it  is 
veiy  hard  to  be  misread  by  now  ?  We  are  surfeited 
with  exhortations  to  Christian  love  as  the  condition 
of  good  repute,  which  lack  the  self-respect  of  heathen 
philosophy.  "  Dare  not  trip  before  yourself,"  says 
Montaigne.  Plutarch  tells  us  of  a  certain  Roman, 
who  put  reality  above  reputation  to  that  degree  that 
when  a  workman  offered  for  five  talents  to  cover  up 
certain  parts  of  his  house  which  lay  exposed  to  the 
view  of  his  neighbors,  he  answered,  "  I  will  give  you 
ten  to  make  my  whole  house  so  transparent  that  the 
whole  city  may  see  how  I  live."  So  there  is  recorded 
of  the  Spartans  a  law  expressive  of  the  same  rever- 
ence for  the  rights  of  being  over  seeing,  to  the  effect 
that,  whenever  a  bad  man  offered  a  good  piece  of  ad- 
vice in  the  Senate,  a  good  man  should  be  at  once 
called  on  to  take  the  discovery  to  himself  and  to  pro- 
pose the  motion.  All  men  despise  pretense  in  others, 
the  attempt  to  pass  for  what  one  is  not.  Hear 
-^schylus's  description  of  Amphiaraus,  a  Greek  seer : 
"  He  wielded  a  fair  orbed  shield,  yet  without  device 
thereon ;  for  he  wished  not  to  seem,  but  to  be  right- 
eous, reaping  fruit  from  the  deep  furrow  in  his  soul, 
from  which  sprout  forth  his  divine  coimsels.     Against 


320  THE   LAW   OF   THE    BLESSED   LIFE. 

this  champion  it  were  best  to  send  only  divine  an- 
tagonists. A  dread  adversary  is  he  who  reveres  the 
gods." 

Doing  and  being;  what  a  difference  between 
them !  And  how  little  apprehended !  The  old 
Hebrew  history  is  repeated  in  the  youth  of  to-day. 
Leviticus  and  Deuteronomy  await  him ;  prescription 
in  business,  politics,  education,  religion;  things  to 
be  done,  rules  for  doing  them.  We  have  thrown  off 
Old  World  lordships  and  respects,  and  everybody  is 
after  his  rights  and  making  his  protest ;  and  yet  our 
boasted  equality  is  a  domination  by  public  desires, 
opinions,  tendencies,  fashions  set  by  the  drift  of  the 
masses  and  their  leaders,  practically  as  monarchical 
as  Russia,  as  exacting  as  Leviticus.  The  Church  has 
her  panacea,  which  she  calls  "  getting  religion."  In 
all  this  pharmacy  of  social  drugs  and  specifics,  the 
real  gospel  of  free  choice,  the  art  of  being  what  it  is 
becoming  to  be,  shall  be  hard  enough  to  come  at. 
Yet  if  this  art  be  not  found,  one  shall  exhaust  the 
commercial  Leviticus,  and  the  political  Deuteronomy 
on  top  of  that,  and  the  religious  canon  beyond  that, 
yes,  the  organized  charities  even,  good  as  many  of 
their  intentions  are,  —  and  it  shall  all  be  to  "  fill 
his  bosom  with  the  east  wind."  Pour  water  into  a 
sieve,  plant  sticks  in  a  desert,  sow  chaff  in  the  fur- 
rows of  your  plow,  and  as  much  will  come  of  it,  as 
from  the  poor  dray-horse  life  of  blind  conformity  to 
prescriptive  tasks  set  your  free  citizen  of  Church  and 
State  by  the  managers  of  the  hour. 

Even  a  child,  while  he  must  be  subject  to  definite 
commands,  deserves  to  have  respect  shown  to  the 
principles  of  moral  self-government  in  him.  He  can 
be  shown  that  the  commands  look  beyond  the  mere 


THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE.  321 

act  of  obedience  to  some  relation  of  bis  will  to  wbat 
it  sbould  bonor  and  love ;  in  otber  words,  to  being, 
beyond  tbe  doing.  Of  every  true  parent  tbe  yearn- 
ing is,  " '  My  cbild,  give  me  thy  beart ' ;  I  am  not 
content  you  sbould  merely  do  wbat  I  command  ;  I 
would  bave  you  wisb  for  yourself  to  be  wbat  you 
ougbt,  and  let  me  belp  you  to  tbis."  And  if  tbe 
cbild  bas  a  rigbt  to  tbe  earliest  possible  impression, 
tbat  tbe  life  is  in  wbat  we  are,  not  in  wbat  we  do  or 
seem,  bas  not  tbe  grown-up  cbild  need  of  tbe  same 
tbing  as  conviction  ? 

He  bas  before  bim  continually  tbe  spectacle  of  suc- 
cessful sbams  and  ill-bestowed  offices  and  rewards ; 
bonors  for  lip  or  band  services,  bowever  impurely, 
insincerely,  sensationally  done. 

"  Is,  tben,  tbe  world,"  tbe  youtb  asks,  "  anytbing 
more  tban  an  instrument  for  tbe  cunning  to  play 
upon  witb  tbese  well-reputed  functions  and  conform- 
ities? "  Do  not  tbe  free  citizens  clamor  for  sensation 
novels,  newspaper,  pulpit,  gossip  of  personalities ; 
vote  ideas  a  bore  and  tbinking  about  principles  puri- 
tanic ?  Man  is  plainly  on  tbe  stump  in  tbis  age  and 
country  at  least,  vending  bis  wares  and  begging  for 
patronage.  See  bow  tbe  mass  winks  at  tbe  ill-doings 
of  eacb  member,  conscious  of  participating  in  tbe  ig- 
noble arts  it  bas  to  detect  wben  tbey  are  past  con- 
cealment. Is  tbere  any  reward  for  scrupulous  bonor 
outside  tbe  delicate  conscience  itself ;  and  wbat  does 
tbat  pass  for  in  public  life,  wbere  it  is  taken  for 
granted  tbat  services  rendered  tbe  best  cause  look  to 
office  as  pay  ? 

All  tbis  tbe  youtb  of  tbis  land  are  taking  note  of. 
It  is  certainly  not  tbe  wbole  of  life,  by  any  means ; 
but  it  is  too  palpably  true,  so  far  as  it  goes.     It  is 

21 


322  THE   LAW  OF  THE   BLESSED   LIFE. 

what  will  impress  any  one  who  is  not  armed  with 
self-respect  enough  to  contemn  the  policy  of  mere 
"  success ; "  and,  if  he  lacks  the  finer  sense,  he  may 
come  to  look  up  to  the  social  habits  and  leligious 
methods  that  minister  to  this  state  of  things  with  the 
pride  of  a  lackey  in  his  livery.  Let  a  young  person, 
then,  know  how  to  be  a  fanatic  at  least  in  one  thing, 
—  his  self-respect !  Let  him  be  competent  to  stand 
so  wholly  upon  what  he  is,  rather  than  on  what  he  is 
thought  to  be,  that  he  is  prepared  to  understand  the 
Greek  orator,  Phocion's  question,  when  he  found  the 
whole  people  applauding  his  speech :  "  Why,  what 
then  have  I  said  that  is  wrong?"  Let  him  appre- 
ciate Socrates'  answer,  when  told  that  the  people 
spoke  ill  of  him :  "  Not  at  all,  it  is  not  of  me  they 
speak ;  there  is  nothing  of  me  in  what  they  say." 
Let  him  be  thoroughly  persuaded  that  what  is  not 
real  is  really  nothing ;  and,  careless  of  praises  won 
by  actions  that  minister  to  men's  interests  alone,  live 
firm  in  the  faith  that,  —  true  nobility  is, 

"  Not  to  scatter  bread  and  gold, 

Goods  and  raiment  bought  and  sold ; 
But  to  hold  fast  his  simple  sense, 
And  speak  the  speech  of  innocence, 
And  with  hand,  and  body,  and  blood, 
To  make  his  bosom-counsel  good. 
For  he  that  feeds  men  serveth  few ; 
He  serves  all  who  dares  be  true." 

I.  "  Will  to  be  what  thou  oughtest  to  be  ! "  Will ! 
Theology  has  much  to  say  of  the  worthlessness  of 
mere  willing,  at  least  in  the  first  steps.  Well,  we  all 
know  that  God  must  do  it,  if  we  mean  by  that  name 
the  moral  and  spiritual  power  that  is  working  in 
every  human  faculty  to  ends  beyond  its  sight  or 
force.     But  it  is  we  must  do  the  willing,  if  our  first 


1 


THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE.  823 

steps  are  to  be  good  for  anything ;  and  that  is  itself 
the  very  way  in  which  God  acts  in  us.  There  is  no 
self-mastery,  till  that  same  concentrated  force  of  pur- 
pose or  love  of  an  ideal  which  man  applies  to  what  he 
most  desires,  is  brought  to  bear  on  character.  The 
same  earnestness  that  makes  the  successful  soldier, 
speculator,  pioneer,  makes  the  hero  and  the  saint  in 
this  other  sphere ;  only  it  is  turned  another  way,  set 
on  another  key.  What  say  the  practical  proverbs  ? 
"  The  gods  help  those  that  help  themselves."  "  Pray 
to  fortune  with  your  hands  at  work."  "To  breathe 
in  the  flute  is  not  to  play  ;  you  must  move  your  fin- 
gers." In  short,  the  will  is  the  man  in  action,  as  the 
soul  is  the  unconscious  deep  of  resource  on  which  it 
is  to  draw.  No  growth,  indeed,  without  these  secret, 
often  unimagined,  unsought,  resources,  never  yet 
sounded  nor  explored  by  man.  But  it  is  always  the 
will  that  makes  them  operative  for  character.  What 
have  you  done  with  your  will  ?  What  is  it  about  ? 
That  is  the  first  question.  So  much  money,  so  much 
skill,  so  much  visible  mastery,  so  much  work-power 
and  claim  on  others,  it  'has  achieved  ?  Well,  then, 
has  it,  or  has  it  not,  left  the  real  personality  to  pine 
and  starve  ? 

II.  "  Will  to  be  what  thou  oughtest  to  be."  This 
is  the  inspiration,  the  motive  power  in  character. 
*^  What  thou  canst  be,"  —  this  is  the  measure  that 
interprets  duty;  for  all  things  of  value  are  inter- 
preted by  a  measure,  and  limit  is  the  ground  condi- 
tion of  all  form,  all  order,  all  beauty,  all  freedom,  all 
growth.  What  we  ought  to  be  is  what  we  can  be, 
not  more  nor  less.  Our  opportunity  determines  it, 
and  in  respect  of  this,  duty  and  development  are  one. 
If  we  speak  of  duty  to  God,  we  can  properly  mean 


324  THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE. 

nothing  else  than  what  we  owe  to  our  own  moral, 
physical,  intellectual,  spiritual  growth.  Our  Divine 
calls  are  just  our  faculties ;  every  one  is  a  nearer 
"  Way,  Truth,  Life,"  than  any  book  or  person. 

Our  duty  to  mankind  is  the  same ;  for  whatever  is 
in  us  to  be  or  do,  has  its  function  in  society,  and 
would  not  be  in  us  if  it  were  not  needed  there.  That 
every  one  should  have  opportunity  to  be  what  he  can 
be,  and  so  fulfill  his  duty  in  its  largest  sense,  is  then 
the  true  end  of  social  custom,  law,  manners.  What- 
ever suppresses  one  aspiration  for  culture,  weakens 
the  power  of  duty,  the  inspiration  of  life,  the  freedom 
of  religion  which  is  liberty  to  be  what  we  can  be. 

If  it  shall  seem  to  any  that  this  is  a  truism  which 
no  one  denies,  I  ask  him  to  consider  when  there  was 
ever  a  church,  whose  creed  so  defined  the  purpose  of 
religion,  —  as  the  full  development  of  human  nature, 
in  each  and  every  one,  in  accordance  with  his  capac- 
ities, and  their  relations  with  the  Infinite  of  truth 
and  good  ?  There  was  never  a  time  when  some  hu- 
man force,  in  man  or  woman,  for  art,  science,  natural 
affection,  physical  culture,  love  of  nature,  free  in- 
quiry, political  self-government,  practical  humanity, 
or  personal  heroism,  was  not  under  the  ban  of  the  in- 
stituted religion ;  did  not  have  to  wage  battle  with 
it  in  the  interest  of  mankind.  It  has  taken  eighteen 
hundred  years  of  instituted  Christianity,  I  will  not 
say  to  bring  out,  since  that  is  the  work  of  many 
causes,  but  to  permit  a  really  universal  form  of  re- 
ligion to  appear  ;  and  then  a  new  continent  was  ne- 
cessary for  the  new  races  in  order  to  justify  man  as 
against  traditional  churches  of  authority,  to  say  to 
each  of  us,  "  Be  and  do  the  best  that  is  in  you. 
Your  nature  is  not  botch-work,  nor  deception,  nor 


I 


THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE.  325 

condemnation  and  curse,  nor  pitiful  subservient 
creeping  before  a  political  catch-word  or  a  popular 
name,  nor  aimless  force.  Leave  not  a  talent  buried; 
waste  none  in  flippancy ;  trample  none  out  under 
animal  hoofs.  Be  what  you  can  be,  not  as  function^ 
ary,  but  as  personal  force  in  face  of  the  facts  of  the 
world." 

"  What  thou  canst  be."  This  does  not  mean  the 
impossible,  nor  the  unlimited.  It  means  growth ;  not 
a  fixed  and  final  perfection  to  be  reached ;  not  accom- 
plishment to-day  or  to-morrow ;  rather  a  path  where 
hindrance  can  be  made  help ;  but  where  miracle,  or 
interference  with  the  conditions,  would  be  fatal.  Its 
law  is,  "Make  the  most  of  your  actual  foothold;  let  it 
bring  out  courage  and  enthusiasm."  Its  warning  is 
not  against  limited  spheres,  but  against  complicated 
ones ;  for  the  very  secret  of  power  is  to  know  how 
much  may  be  effected  with  the  nearest  materials. 
Power  is  in  concentration ;  weakness  is  in  dissipa- 
tion, distraction  of  forces.  As  for  doing,  we  are  all 
strong  enough  to  do  something  well;  but  none  of  us 
are  strong  enough  to  do  all  things  well,  nor  yet,  while 
reaching  out  over  near  opportunities  neglected,  to  ful- 
fill what  lie  farther  off.  Wisdom  is  to  know  one's 
proper  limits  and  conditions.  "  Nature,"  said  Goethe 
finely,  "can  what  she  wills,  because  she  wills  what 
she  can."  "  Be  ye  perfect,"  was  the  precept  of  a 
saint;  but  it  were  no  wise  philosophy  to  make  it 
mean,  "  be  past  improvement."  Rather  let  it  read, 
"  whatever  your  means,  hold  them  to  be  worth  your 
best  endeavor."  If  there  is  one  thing  we  cannot  get 
over  nor  put  by,  it  is  nature's  question,  "  Have  you 
complied  with  my  conditions,  accepted  my  disci- 
plines?"    Genius  has  to  do  that.     "  Wisdom,"  says 


326  THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE. 

the  Apocrypha,  "  at  the  first  will  walk  with  a  man 
by  crooked  ways,  and  bring  fear  and  dread  upon 
him,  and  torment  him  with  her  discipline  until  she 
have  tried  him  by  her  laws ;  then  will  she  return  the 
straight  way  unto  him  and  show  him  her  secrets." 
There  can  be  no  demoralization  worse  than  the  self- 
indulgence  that  seeks  great  rewards  without  paying 
the  honest  price  in  sacrifices,  disciplines,  consecra- 
tions. 

So,  then,  "  will  to  be  what  thou  canst  be  "  means 
''  be  what  will  make  the  best  of  your  materials.*' 
They  asked  the  painter  Guido  where  he  found  mod- 
els for  his  grand  human  heads.  The  artist  called  in 
a  porter  who  was  passing  by,  and  drew  a  copy  of  his 
bust,  in  which  you  could  plainly  discern  the  man, 
yet  where  every  capacity  was  turned  to  highest  ac- 
count. See  what  a  queenly  circle  of  rosy  petals  the 
sun  knows  how  to  draw  from  a  clumsy,  coarse  cactus. 
Pare  ofif  the  turf  from  under  old,  dead,  dry  castle 
walls,  and  choice  seeds  are  found  ready  to  blossom 
out.  The  artesian  well  proves  that  every  spot  in 
the  desert  has  a  possible  oasis  latent  a  few  feet  be- 
low the  hot  surface-sands.  "  There  are  conditions 
so  sad,"  said  Jean  Paul  Richter,  "  that  there  would 
seem  to  be  no  chance  of  lighting  them ;  as  no  rain- 
bow is  possible  where  it  rains  over  the  whole  sky." 
And  yet  every  condition  has  its  own  ideal  best. 
Common  life  passes  the  dreams  of  poets,  let  any  one 
turn  his  thoughts  in  on  the  mysteries  of  his  lot,  its 
compensations,  its  unexpected,  unpledged  resources : 

"Who  ne'er  his  bread  in  sorrow  ate, 
He  knows  you  not,  ye  Heavenly  Powers !  " 

What  one  cannot  do,  is  often  plain  enough  ;  what 
he  cannot  be,  is  often  also  but  too  palpable.     But, 


THE   LAW   OF    THE   BLESSED   LIFE.  327 

when  all  else  fails,  comes  trust  in  the  hidden  rein- 
forcement behind  the  wits  or  the  will. 

"  See  yon  drifting  bark  is  nearing, 

But,  alas,  the  helmsman  fails. 
Cheerily  on,  though,  never  fearing, 

Wind  of  heaven  shall  fill  the  sails. 
Summon  all  thy  faith  and  daring ; 

Heaven  will  pledge  no  helping  hand. 
Trust  some  wondrous  angel's  bearing 

Thee  to  yon  bright  wonder-land." 

"  Will  to  be  what  thou  oughtest  to  be,"  and  how  to 
will  "  what  thou  canst  be  "  will  come  plainer.  One 
will  put  himself  in  the  best  opportunity  ;  seek  the 
friendships  that  enforce  him  to  be  sincere  with  him- 
self and  others ;  and  goad  him  to  industry,  courage, 
desire.  He  will  not  stagnate  in  his  place.  If  it  can- 
not serve  his  conscience,  nor  consist  with  his  honor, 
he  will  straightway  out  of  it,  if  he  must  feed  on 
crusts.  But  the  true  way  is  to  change  place  only  by 
outgrowing  it.  Under  that  condition  it  is  ten  to  one 
the  place  will  match  the  man,  and  refuse  to  be  out- 
grown. "Wherever  one  is,  the  finest  twigs  and  leaf- 
lets of  work  shall  be  filled  out  with  honesty  like 
that  which  Nature  puts  into  the  elms  and  pines  that 
make  the  mountains  solemn  and  the  roads  stately 
and  fair.  To  be  one's  best  self  in  whatever  one  does, 
—  this  is  politics,  and  manners,  and  society,  and  re- 
ligion. If  it  is  fit  one  should  be  where  he  is,  it  is  fit 
that  his  whole  self-respect  should  be  there  also.  I 
suppose  the  test  of  self-respect  is  to  dare  confess 
one's  limits.  Stand  for  what  you  are  and  can  do, 
and  for  nothing  else ;  there  you  shall  be  a  king,  else- 
where and  otherwise,  sooner  or  later,  a  poltroon. 
Great  and  little  are  in  the  man,  not  in  the  business. 
Where  one  has  earned  good  understanding  with  the 


828  THE  LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIEE. 

laws  of  his  own  conscience  and  capacity,  there  is  his 
throne. 

To  me  the  most  astounding  fact  is  the  compara- 
tively small  number  of  men  who  know  how  to  con- 
ceive an  abstract  principle ;  who  know  what  you 
mean  when  you  speak  of  duty  as  distinguished  from 
duties,  or  of  honor  as  distinguished  from  honors,  or 
of  right  as  distinguished  from  rights.  I  call  the  con- 
dition to  which  this  tends,  in  any  one,  moral  idiocy  ; 
and,  so  long  as  a  mind  is  in  that  condition,  though 
it  have  the  cunning  to  heap  up  millions,  it  is  the 
mere  rudiment  of  a  mind,  and  less  than  the  rudi- 
ment of  a  conscience.  For  all  rational  thought  and 
high  purpose  depend  on  the  sight  and  love  of  princi- 
ples. And  when  I  say  that  the  number  of  persons 
who  are  cultivating  this  perilous  contempt  of  ab- 
stractions of  principles  apart  from  tangible  facts  and 
details  is  so  enormous  as  to  control  public  tastes  and 
interests,  I  simply  point  to  the  moral  mischief  of 
an  education  which  is  coming  more  and  more  to  teach 
a  community  not  to  think,  but  only  to  calculate  and 
crave.  So  ebbs  the  divine  tide  of  reason  and  culture 
to-day ;  by  and  by,  surely,  there  will  be  reaction,  and 
the  grander  wave  will  come  flooding  in. 

III.  "  Will  to  be  what  thou  oughtest  to  be,"  this  is 
the  inspiration  of  conduct.  "  What  thou  canst  be," 
this  is  the  measure.  "  What,  therefore,  thou  wilt  be," 
this  is  the  guarantee.  Confidence  in  the  tendencies 
of  life  behind  all  the  degeneracies,  because  these  are 
under  penalties  that  in  the  long  run  will  make  man 
conform  to  the  right  order  ;  and  because,  when  you 
will  to  be  what  you  ought  and  what  you  can,  you  are 
in  the  line  of  success,  and  may  trust  your  spiritual  eye 
as  a  sound  and  healthy  organ  which  sees  the  world  as 


THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED   LIFE.  329 

it  is,  and  points  out  to  you  what  is  wortli  seeking 
and  having.  The  rock  on  which  religion,  morality, 
intelligence,  stand  is  faith  in  the  best,  —  a  sense  of 
affinity  with  it,  of  inherent  inalienable  unity  with  it, 
of  its  real  being  and  indispensable  necessity.  What 
we  need  is  to  enlist  in  the  service  of  the  best  pur- 
poses that  class  of  sentiments  which  draw  the  lovers 
to  their  beloved,  the  artist  to  his  ideal,  the  conqueror 
to  his  star,  the  wanderer  to  his  home,  —  unchangea- 
ble affinity,  natural  attraction,  pride  in  constancy  to 
that  for  which  we  are  made.  Nothing  but  this  will 
conquer  temptation ;  for  this  is  master  of  the  field 
before  it  comes,  and  orders  it  off  by  right  of  eminent 
domain.  If  there  be  a  dream  or  a  hope  in  you  that 
makes  life  look  richer  and  nobler,  lay  your  hand  in 
that,  just  as  you  would  in  the  open  hand  of  God. 
Seek  those  who  neither  mock  nor  distrust  it.  Be- 
lieve that  others  would  seek  it  if  they  knew  it  as  it 
is ;  that  they  are,  in  blind  ways,  if  in  no  other,  grop- 
ing after  it  now.  There  is  a  lesson  in  the  power  of 
a  fanatic  to  make  others  believe  what  is  dear  to  him. 
But  what  no  fanatic  could  do  with  you,  this  desired 
integrity,  honor,  purity,  helpfulness,  has  done  ;  it  has 
made  you  say,  "  This,  which  I  ought  to  be,  is  what, 
therefore,  I  shall  be.  How  should  I  recognize  it  to 
be  becoming,  if  I  were  not  made  for  it  ?  So  true  is 
the  old  Stoic  maxim,  '  None  can  have  thoughts  of 
God,  unless  he  were  of  the  nature  of  God.'  " 

I  think  a  good  man's  hopes  and  dreams  are  like 
real  objects  seen  far  off  on  the  road  before  you,  grow- 
ing greater  and  clearer  as  the  distance  narrows.  How 
true  that  the  highest  prophecy  is  but  pale  foregleam 
of  what  is  to  come !  Shakespeare  saw  fairy  girdles 
laid  swift  as  thought  round  the  globe.     Now  thought 


330  THE   LAW  OF  THE  BLESSED   LIFE. 

itself  moves  on  such  real  girdles  to  make  the  uni- 
versal spirit  of  our  age.  In  the  old  Buddhist  my- 
thologies you  read  of  ages  of  creation  counted  by  the 
millions  ;  of  worlds  piled  on  worlds,  past  power  of 
figures  to  express.  Christian  Bibliolatry  had  its  long 
day  of  contempt  for  all  this  Pagan  imagining.  Now 
come  geology  and  astronomy,  with  telescope,  micro- 
scope, calculus,  record  of  life  and  of  rocks,  to  make 
the  old  vision  more  than  good.  In  such  fulfillments 
we  recognize  the  spirit  that  dwells  in  history  and 
makes  man's  life  one  continuous  whole,  —  end  con- 
tained in  beginning,  deep  answering  deep.  But  do 
we  think  moral  prophecy  less  real  ?  As  mythology 
said,  "  What  ought  to  be  is,"  so  prophecy  says, 
"  What  ought  to  be  shall  be."  Buddha,  Confucius, 
Moses,  Jesus,  trusted  their  dreams  of  social  unity. 
Ages  pass ;  and  now  what  applications,  uses,  mean- 
ings, come  for  those  principles  of  theirs  of  which 
they  could  not  have  conceived,  and  of  which  what 
they  did  conceive  found  so  little  faith  in  their  days  ? 
Shall  the  universal  law  that  guarantees  such 
dreams  of  humanity  have  no  assurance  for  personal 
ideals?  Have  men  no  prerogative  of  progress  be- 
yond the  lower  forms  of  life  ?  Nature  does  not  guar- 
antee normal  growth  to  every  tree  or  bud.  How 
many  flowers  perish  before  seed-time !  How  much 
of  nature  remains  but  an  intention  !  But  if  man  has 
not  immortal  years  to  grow  in,  it  is  a  strange  irra- 
tionality, at  least,  that  a  being  who  can  see  the  values 
of  life,  who  can  be  conscious  of  unused  powers  and 
possibilities,  who  can  and  does  participate  in  princi- 
ples and  truths  over  which  death  flits  only  like  a 
passing  cloud,  and  which  it  would  seem  amazing 
waste  should  suffer  annihilation,  —  I  say,  it   seems 


THE   LAW   OF    THE   BLESSED   LIFE.  331 

a  piece  of  irrationality,  at  least,  that  such  a  force 
should  have  no  part  in  this  immortality  which  it  sees 
and  knows.  And  if  we  have  an  immortality  to  work 
in,  what  prophecy  of  personal  growth  need  fail  ? 

But  suppose  that  cannot  be  proved.  Is  truth  less 
true,  is  law  less  sovereign,  is  ideal  right  less  the  goal 
of  human  progress,  because  its  fulfillment  comes  in 
the  life  of  mankind,  and  not  of  individual  men  ?  Still 
must  we  trust  it,  though  we  achieve  only  the  power 
to  trust,  and  love  it ;  whatever  becomes  of  us,  it  is 
no  less  truth  and  right  and  law.  But  wisdom  is 
justified  of  her  children.  Her  disciplines  are  per- 
sonal achievement,  are  personal  fulfillment.  It  is  not 
for  us  to  pray  that  the  noble  purpose  shall  bring  the 
peace  and  power  it  needs.  It  is  peace,  it  is  power ; 
and  there  is  no  other  success  possible.  Two  things 
are  of  moment.  Choose  the  path  of  honor.  Choose 
the  nearest^  straightest  path  of  honor.  One  may 
hold  on  to  his  choice,  and  yet  follow  it  by  winding 
paths,  and  pay  heavy  penalties  for  it ;  for  waste, 
leakage,  break-downs,  it  shall  cost  what  we  choose  to 
pay.  Yet  over  all  stands  forever  the  handwriting  of 
nature,  —  the  word  of  God:  ''The  right  way  is  the 
blessed  way."  Will,  then,  to  be  what  you  ought ; 
and  the  tread  of  your  feet  on  that  track  shall  be 
lighter  at  once,  and  purer  air  and  brighter  sky  shall 
greet  you,  guiding  stars  come  nearer,  events  offer 
sympathy,  hands  reach  for  help.  And  every  instant 
of  fidelity  and  endeavor  is  health  and  growth  and 

joy- 

"  The  Future  hides  in  it 

Good  hap  and  sorrow  ; 

"We  press  still  thorow. 
Naught  that  abides  in  it 
Daunting  us,  —  onward. 


332  THE   LAW   OF   THE   BLESSED  LIFE. 

And  solemn  before  us 
Veiled,  the  dark  Portal, 
Goal  of  all  mortal :  — 
Stars  silent  rest  o'er  us. 
Graves  under  us  silent. 

But  heard  are  the  voices,  — 
Heard  are  the  sages, 
The  worlds  and  the  ages  : 
*  Choose  well,  your  choice  is 

Brief  and  yet  endless. 

Here  eyes  do  regard  you, 
In  eternity's  stillness ; 
Here  is  all  fullness. 

Ye  brave,  to  reward  yon  ; 

Work,  and  despair  not.'  " 


GAIN  IN  LOSS. 


Philosophy  is  generally  supposed  to  deal  in  think- 
ing bard,  rather  than  in  living  well.  It  is  held  to 
be  a  science  not  for  the  many,  but  for  the  few. 
Nothing  is  more  common  than  to  refer  to  it  in  a 
matter-of-course  way,  as  far  inferior  to  what  is 
called  a  humble,  unquestioning  faith  in  accredited 
messenger  or  inspired  book.  I  hold  the  exactly 
contrary  view.  I  hold  that  a  true  religious  philos- 
ophy, or  philosophy  of  religion  rather,  is  not  only 
the  need  of  every  one  who  is  not  too  great  nor  too 
little  to  be  confronted  by  the  facts  of  life,  but  that  it 
is  the  vital  essence  of  all  strength  to  meet  these 
facts.  The  "  heathen"  judged  wisely  when  they  gave 
the  name  to  all  moral  and  spiritual  wisdom  what- 
ever, and  defined  virtue  as  the  practice  of  philoso- 
phy. How  to  grow  by  what  would  seem  to  defeat 
and  dwarf  us  was  the  problem  of  the  best  ancient 
philosophy,  —  surely  the  noblest  of  problems;  and 
it  was  because  thoughtful  and  earnest  men  really 
solved  that  problem  in  conduct  as  well  as  theory 
that  they  came  to  call  philosophy  the  science  of  liv- 
ing as  well  as  thinking  right.  And  it  is  very  clear 
to  me,  not  only  that  men  like  Aurelius,  Seneca, 
Plato,  Epictetus,  whose  maxims  have  come  down  to 
us,  full  of  strength  and  cheer,  did  personally  get  at 


334  GAIN   IN  LOSS. 

those  precepts  by  a  noble  experience,  but  also  that 
they  met  their  lot  in  quite  as  manly  and  successful  a 
way  as  the  best  reputed  Christians  do.  Are  not  the 
facts  of  life  which  thoughtful  people  have  had  to 
meet,  to  account  for  and  make  the  best  of,  essen- 
tially the  same  in  all  times,  under  all  religious 
names,  or  under  no  religious  names?  Life  is  life, 
the  same  laws  and  relations  always ;  and  therefore 
there  is  always  the  same  grand  first  necessity  for 
faith  in  it  and  in  them,  a  faith  which  is  in  fact  the 
instinctive  sense  of  our  natural  human  resource,  none 
the  less  true  because  it  is  an  assumption,  and  we 
know  not  how  we  come  by  it.  Science  itself  rests 
on  assumptions.  Now  the  basis  of  the  philosophy 
of  life  in  all  ages  is  simply  a  sublime  assumption,  as 
familiar  to  Socrates  as  to  Fenelon  or  Paul,  —  that 
the  universe  means  our  good,  that  our  destiny  is  in 
best  hands. 

This  is  the  substance  of  that  faith  in  self-renunci- 
ation, in  which  philosopher  and  saint  agree,  —  tri- 
umphal song  of  all  freedom  and  progress  since  the 
world  began.  It  is  simply  a  law  of  right  reason  as 
seen  by  man's  ideal  eyesight,  namely,  that  one 
should  not  ultimately  lose  anything  which  it  is  es- 
sential to  the  good  of  each  and  all  that  he  should 
keep.  Whatever  things  can  be  taken  from  him  then 
will,  in  going,  but  bring  the  value  and  security  of 
this  highest  ownership  to  light.  This  hold  we  have 
on  our  own  ideal  personality  is  indeed  the  only  real 
estate  for  the  richest  of  us.  Our  science  of  property 
and  production  needs  infusion  of  the  spirit  of  that 
invincible  old  Stoic,  of  whom  Plutarch  says  that, 
when  he  had  lost  his  country  and  his  famil}'-  in  the 
destruction  of  Megara,  himself  escaping  hardly  and 


GAIN  IN   LOSS.  335 

naked  out  of  the  flames,  he  said,  "  I  have  saved  all 
my  goods,  —  my  justice,  my  courage,  my  temperance, 
my  prudence.  I  have  lost  nothing  ;  for  all  I  could 
call  my  own  I  had  about  me."  It  required  a  de- 
vout faith  that  the  order  of  destiny  was  on  his 
side  so  to  lift  up  his  heart  with  manly  trust.  And 
the  somewhat  rough  counsel  of  another  of  these 
Stoics,  "  Turn  thy  face  about,  and  shut  up  every  ave- 
nue to  happiness,"  I  must  think,  after  all,  a  more 
believing  creed  than  the  Paleys  and  the  Poor  Rich- 
ards offer,  —  a  sharp  rebuke  to  the  craving  for  self- 
gratification  that  is  so  much  preached  and  practiced 
as  the  best  religion  and  highest  morality,  now  as  it 
was  then.  In  an  age  of  refined  sensibilities  these 
maxims  seem  harsher  than  they  did  to  their  authors. 
But  they  contain  that  indispensable  measure  of  the 
meanings  of  loss  and  gain,  income  and  outgo,  by  the 
real  laws  of  human  life,  which  constitute  freedom 
and  success,  —  a  larger  faith,  I  think,  than  most  of 
the  recognized  and  orthodox  ways  of  believing  in 
God  and  immortality  show  to-day. 

Loss  in  the  divine  economy  is  the  condition  of 
gain,  and  growth  proceeds  by  deprivations ;  just  as 
in  mounting  a  ladder  or  a  hill,  every  point  is  reached 
by  the  withdrawal  of  what  we  rested  on  before.  If 
the  mineral  kept  its  coherence,  how  could  it  mount 
up  in  the  sap,  and  shape  the  fine  tissues  of  grass  and 
flower  ?  If  the  grass  did  not  wither,  how  were  the 
animal  structure  fed  ?  Nature  loved  her  giant  tree- 
ferns,  a  million  ages  ago,  her  pterodactyls,  her  coral 
insects,  but  she  dropped  them  that  her  nobler  man 
might  come.  She  is  not  so  stricken  with  delight 
in  her  handsomest  forms  that  she  cannot  let  them 
go  for  an  invisible  better.     If  you  saw  the  chrysalid 


336  GAIN  IN  LOSS. 

for  the  first  time,  knowing  not  of  the  butterfly  that 
should  come,  you  would  not  want  that  snug  nest, 
those  folded  wings,  that  perfect  rest,  disturbed. 
But  nature  bursts  and  flings  it  away,  as  one  tired 
of  it ;  and  there  is  an  angel  hovering  out  of  the 
beautiful  tomb.  There  can  be  no  exception  to  this 
law  of  growth  in  the  human  and  personal  spheres. 

The  changes  that  will  not  let  the  best  of  us  alone 
are  the  stir  of  our  opportunity.  To  prove  our  limits 
to  be  our  liberties,  —  this  is  the  sweetest  triumph, 
this  the  eternal  gospel,  this  the  true  reading  of  fate 
and  providence,  the  right  use  of  nature.  We  all 
want  freedom.  But  we  achieve  it  in  proportion 
only  as  we  dare  abstain  from  wishing  overmuch  for 
what  we  cannot  hold  by  any  essential  ownership. 
Sovereignty  is  within.  Master  your  cravings,  and 
you  cannot  then  be  subjugated.  The  rare  achieve- 
ment of  life  is  to  be  able  to  say  of  every  desire, 
"  This,  O  heaven,  if  it  is  best ;  but  if  it  is  not  best, 
then  not  this,  but  what  is  best."  This  is  prayer, 
this  only,  this  aspiration  to  freedom,  this  devotion  to 
an  ideal  which  no  private  insistence  of  desires  must 
be  permitted  to  foreclose. 

"Freedom,"  says  Epictetus,  "is  not  procured  by 
full  enjoyment  of  what  is  desired,  but  by  controlling 
the  desire.  '  Diogenes  was  free  because  things  hung 
so  loosely  on  him  that  there  was  no  way  of  getting  at 
him  to  enslave  him.'  "  Are  not  what  we  call  the  vi- 
cissitudes of  life,  on  the  whole,  nature's  gradual  com- 
pulsion of  us  —  our  own  nature's  —  into  a  certain  de- 
tachment, adequate  to  prevent  enslavement  to  fears 
of  losing,  or  despair  at  having  lost,  the  objects  of  our 
desire ;  a  gradual  compulsion,  not  such  as  to  deaden 
our  enthusiasm,  or  crush  our  affections,  by  proving 


GAIN  IN   LOSS.  837 

them  transitory ;  not  tending  to  make  us  love  the  less 
or  hope  the  less,  but  enforcing  control  of  this  over-ea- 
ger grasping  and  absorbing  of  the  soul;  saving  us 
from  the  fate  of  Hercules  in  the  legend,  whose  tunic, 
dipped  in  the  poison  of  too  passionate  desire,  so 
cleaved  to  him  that  it  carried  his  life  with  it  when  it 
was  torn  away  ? 

In  the  passage  of  our  life,  this  saving  wisdom  is 
pressed  further  and  further  home  to  us.  Not  enjoy- 
ment of  any  profit  or  of  any  pleasure  we  have  desired 
gives  the  pure  feeling  of  success,  but  this  rather  :  that 
when  what  we  pursue  delays  to  come,  or  what  we 
cling  to  fails,  we  are  found  free  spirits  still,  able  to 
be  self-sustained,  brave  against  odds  ;  able  through 
our  renunciation  to  reach  powers  upon  higher  levels, 
that  compensate  for  loss  upon  the  lower. 

Not  freedom  only,  but  completeness  of  growth,  ma- 
turity in  breadth  and  height,  all  are  secured  in  this 
way.  It  is  this  that  stimulates  effort.  One  may 
not  know  it  at  the  time,  but  for  every  step  he  gains 
in  personal  growth  he  has  had  to  give  up  his  con- 
tent with  a  lower  stage,  whether  it  be  a  complacent 
or  merely  a  happy  content.  He  never  advances  to 
a  higher  experience  but  he  has  surrendered  what 
made  the  special  delight  of  a  lower  one.  We  some- 
how pay  our  way  on  these  invisible  roads.  And  we 
pay  because,  upon  the  whole,  it  is  infinitely  better 
that  we  should  pay  ;  it  is  self-respect,  and  moral 
sinew,  and  spiritual  joy,  —  in  a  word,  the  ta]o-root  of 
our  growth. 

What  seems  an  enforced  fate  is  thus  the  only  pos- 
sible process  of  freedom.  And  how  wide  a  ground 
is  here  covered !  For,  as  daylight  shows  but  a  slen- 
der fragment  of  the  universe,  and  we  know  not  till 

22 


338  GAIN   IN  LOSS. 

we  have  seen  it  depart  that  the  spaces  around  ns 
are  full  of  shining  worlds,  so  our  human  nature  is 
but  an  unexplored  country,  known  but  in  a  corner 
till  we  have  suffered  loss  of  delights  we  basked  in 
on  the  shores,  as  if  they  were  all-sufficient  and  inca- 
pable of  change.  Without  such  impulse  we  shall 
never  climb  its  heights  of  vision,  nor  mine  its  un- 
sunned wealth  of  uses,  nor  draw  out  its  finer  harvests 
of  tenderness,  nor  trace  the  mystery  of  its  waters  to 
their  hidden  fountains  above  our  conscious  selves. 
What  we  are  and  can  do,  what  others  are  and  need, 
we  can  know  only  by  such  enforced  explorations  of 
our  own  nature.  Only  the  great  lack  can  open  the 
great  resource.  I  think  sometimes  that  this  law  is 
after  all  the  explanation  of  physical  death,  and  of 
the  utter  blindness  of  our  understanding  as  to  all 
that  may  lie  beyond  it.  Let  us  not  distrust  this 
total  lack  of  life  ;  wait  till  it  comes,  and  see  what 
comes  of  it. 

Our  finest  pleasures  are  brought  in  the  surprise 
with  which  we  greet  unexpected  powers,  sprung 
upon  us  in  the  crisis  of  privation.  There  is  appar- 
ently even  a  natural  dependence  of  our  satisfactions 
on  some  previous  sense  of  loss,  just  as  the  delicious 
thrill  of  the  first  spring  day  comes,  in  fact,  of  the 
restoration  of  what  the  winter  had  withheld.  Plato, 
you  know,  thought  that  knowledge  is  reminiscence, 
—  a  recovery  of  what  we  have  lost ;  and  we  may, 
perhaps,  explain  in  this  way  the  delightful  sense  of 
acquiring  whatever  is  worth  having.  How  can  we 
more  thoroughly  bestir  ourselves  to  seek  any  high 
ideal  than  by  esteeming  it  as  something  really  and 
essentially  our  own,  which  has  been  kept  from  us 
by  our  own  fault  or  weakness  ?     Ever  some  form  of 


GAIN  IN  LOSS.  339 

loss  must  condition  the  sense  of  gain.  What  is  the 
ground  of  inspiration  always  but  self  -  surrender  ? 
Renunciation  must  cleave  the  path  for  its  fires,  in 
eloquence,  in  sainthood,  in  prophecy,  in  daily  hero- 
ism and  consecration  which  no  pen  records ;  just  as 
in  every  natural  process,  it  is  the  breaking  loose 
from  old  binding  conditions  that  makes  possible  the 
incoming  of  fresh  and  higher  forces ;  in  crystalliza- 
tion, chemical  structure,  physiological  development, 
health  by  exercise,  music,  —  in  all  which  a  certain 
self -loosing  from  fixed  atomic  positions  opens  the 
way  to  an  influx  of  beauty  and  power. 

From  such  hints  as  these,  can  we  hesitate  to  infer 
that  this  is  the  meaning  of  what  we  call  loss  itself, 
in  the  economy  of  the  spiritual  universe  ? 

The  old  Hindu  philosophy  called  everything  be- 
low God  May^,  or  Illusion.  There  is  a  practical 
truth  veiled  here  we  all  must  learn. 

You  have  seen  a  little  picture  of  what  seems  to  be 
a  death's  head  ;  but  which,  as  you  approach  it,  turns 
into  a  pleasant  room,  and  the  eyeless  sockets  become 
two  happy  children  at  play.  It  is  a  petty  trick  of 
art ;  but  the  sublime  craft  of  nature  is  imaged  in  it. 
We  cannot  comprehend  what  we  call  evil,  in  any 
form,  until  we  remember  the  laws  of  illusion.  Plu- 
tarch counsels,  in  his  treatise  on  "  The  Tranquillity 
of  the  Mind,"  that  we  alter  the  nature  of  our  misfor- 
tunes by  putting  a  different  construction  upon  them. 
This  is  not  mockery.  Doubtless  there  hides  in  each 
a  metamorphosis.  But  we  must  see  what  the  eye 
cannot,  to  find  it.  You  must  carry  the  ideal,  the 
prophecy,  in  yourself ;  and  you  must  seek  the  real 
there,  not  in  the  fixed  outward  fact.  Here  lies  a 
dead  acorn  cup.     But  if  you  look  at  that  decay  only, 


340  GAIN  IN  LOSS. 

you  will  not  perceive  that  a  living  tree  will  be  grow- 
ing where  it  fell,  or  that  the  same  earth  that  absorbs 
the  shell  will  invite  and  feed  a  warm  quick  root. 
If  we  do  not  keep  the  eye  quick  to  detect  this  new- 
comer when  he  shall  appear,  the  eye  will  grow  blind 
and  dead  as  the  dust  it  cleaves  to. 

And,  as  the  bodily  eye  cannot  bear  to  dwell  too 
long  on  one  color,  but  demands  to  be  relieved  by 
the  complementary  one  in  the  perfect  white  ray, 
so  the  spiritual  organ,  or  eye  of  the  personality, 
wastes  away  when  one  nurses  his  calamities,  and 
turns  from  the  refreshment  that  balances  them  in 
the  completeness  of  our  spiritual  nature.  Our  eyes 
would  not  be  made  as  they  are,  were  not  the  alter- 
nation of  colors  needful  for  their  health  already  pro- 
vided for  them  in  the  sunbeam.  And  so  the  differ- 
ent moral  construction  which  we  need  to  put  on  th^ 
darkest  estate  to  restore  our  self-poise  is  doubtless 
already  involved  in  the  relations  of  that  estate,  could 
we  but  recognize  it,  and  bound  some  time  to  appear 
therein.  Goethe  said  he  never  had  an  affliction  he 
did  not  turn  into  a  poem. 

This  philosophy  is  the  salvation  that  needs  no 
miracle  or  supernatural  messenger,  and  cannot  abide 
one.  It  is  the  quintessence  of  nature.  Just  as  the 
date-palm  of  the  desert  grows  with  its  head  in  the 
"  fires  of  heaven  "  and  its  feet  in  the  salt  sands,  so 
brave  men,  by  a  natural  dynamic  force,  make  oppor- 
tunities out  of  the  severest  failures.  Frustrate  Maz- 
zini  with  heart-sickening  disappointments  and  de- 
lays, and  he  proves  a  clear-sighted  prophet  of  the 
most  devoutly  noble  philosophy,  religious  and  polit- 
ical in  one,  that  the  age  can  conceive.  Rome  smote 
into  atoms  all  the  temporal  ambitions  and  compla- 


GAIN  IN  LOSS.  341 

cent  prophecies  of  a  Semitic  race,  and  there  sprung 
out  of  that  dust  of  perished  hopes  a  saint,  who  could 
say  to  the  desire  of  kingdoms,  material  at  least, 
"  Get  behind  me,  Satan  !  "  and  "  What  shall  it  profit 
a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own 
soul ?  " 

These  are  just  high  constructions  put  on  apparent 
loss,  and  as  natural  as  they  are  noble.  For  did  not 
these  brave  men  find  their  opportunity  waiting  for 
them  ?  They  simply  saw  an  eternal  fact  of  nature, 
waiting  its  own  proper  next  step,  namely,  the  fact 
which  they  must  be  and  could  be.  They  accepted 
the  law  forewrit  in  life  itself,  that  was  making  the 
history  whereof  they  were  part.  They  just  had  their 
eyes  open,  and  saiv.  What  was  this  high  construc- 
tion of  the  fate  that  awaited  them  but  the  right  read- 
ing for  themselves,  with  some  approach  to  truth,  of 
what  the  providential  laws  have  meant  to  enforce  or 
effect,  not  by  their  hard  experience  only,  but  by  all 
loss  and  cross  ?  For  the  best  and  bravest  do  but  in- 
terpret nature  more  or  less  wisely,  illustrate  what 
experience  may  involve,  in  diverse  forms,  for  all 
men.  Where  Jesus  or  another  is  taken  for  more 
than  an  illustration  of  these  saving  principles  of  hu- 
man nature,  iho,  soul  of  man  is  desecrated  by  every 
word  that  is  lifted  in  his  praise. 

The  lesson  of  life  is  to  take  the  ideal  elements  of 
experience  to  be  the  great  tidal  wave  of  our  nature, 
not  exceptional  and  local  attractions  in  certain  per- 
sons. 

It  is  a  suggestive  fact,  in  this  point  of  view,  that 
we  are  wont  to  look  forward  to  troubles  with  fears 
of  what  they  will  inflict,  but  hack  on  them  with 
wonder  at  what  they  have  saved  us  from.     We  ad- 


342  GAIN   IX   LOSS. 

mit  that  we  would  not  have  had  it  otherwise  with 
us,  though  misfortune  seemed  so  bad  in  the  passing. 
We  would  not  exchange  our  lot  with  another's ;  the 
risk  were  too  great,  bright  as  the  change  might  look 
in  many  ways.  After  all,  it  is  our  own  lot;  anoth- 
er's were  strange  and  alien.  Personal  annoyances 
and  grievances  that  beset  our  days  have,  more  often 
than  not,  proved  to  be  followers  of  our  star,  bringing 
tributes,  —  bearers  of  fortitude,  tact,  better  under- 
standing of  surroundings ;  many  a  happy  surprise 
and  transformation  of  ugly  circumstance  came  in 
them.  Our  needs  are  God's  opportunity,  and  man's 
also.  The  law  of  the  storm  is  in  the  soul  too.  As 
the  lightning  shoots  from  the  cloud  in  its  advance, 
so  the  rainbow  looks  back  from  it,  when  it  has  gone 
by,  meeting  the  sunshine  that  gleams  brightest  where 
our  fields  are  wet  with  heaviest  showers. 

And  as  we  wonder  when  we  think  what  our  losses 
have  done  for  us,  so  we  are  as  often  astonished  in 
discovering  what  they  have  saved  us  from.  The 
ball  on  the  very  top  of  the  spire  of  St.  Paul's  in 
London  is  at  the  end  of  a  narrow  iron  neck,  and 
the  traveler  who  has  come  up  to  that  dizzy  height, 
through  that  reed  literally  shaken  in  the  wind,  trem- 
bles as  he  feels  it  vibrate  beneath  him  ;  yet  the  vi- 
bration is  his  safety,  since  the  shaft  must  yield  so 
much  or  it  would  break.  And  so  what  we  dread 
most  in  our  lot  is  apt  to  be  but  some  divine  adjust- 
ment of  our  circumstances  to  save  us  from  the  perils 
of  our  position.  The  vibration  that  threatens  every- 
thing is  a  peculiar  care.  Many  a  man  has  been 
saved  by  reverses  in  business  from  that  absorption  in 
riches  which  turns  life  to  dust.  And  many  a  wo- 
man has  found  in  the  same  experience  a  dignity  and 


GAIN  IN  LOSS.  343 

sweetness  of  which  luxury  was  burying  the  possibil- 
ity. The  necessity  that  sent  her  to  some  work  not 
usually  thought  feminine  was  a  path  to  the  enlarge- 
ment of  her  whole  inward  life. 

One  thinks  himself,  perhaps,  the  most  unfortunate 
of  beings  ;  his  misfortunes  always  strike  him  "in  the 
weakest  point,'*  where  he  was  "  least  prepared  for 
them."  Ah,  my  friend,  where  should  they  strike, 
if  they  are  to  secure  you  ?  How  shall  the  break- 
water be  kept  strong,  if  the  breaches  do  not  warn  us 
where  the  danger  lies  ?  It  is  with  you  but  as  with 
everybody.  Or  do  you  not  confide  in  these  adjust- 
ments, nor  think  them  in  any  sense  "  divine  "  ?  At 
least,  are  not  they  as  likely  to  be  good  as  any  you 
would  put  in  the  place  of  them  ?  Are  we,  then,  so 
wise  in  what  is  best?  "Have  not  our  very  prayers," 
asks  Seneca,  "been  sometimes  more  pernicious  to 
ourselves  than  the  curses  of  our  enemies,  so  that  we 
must  pray  again  to  have  our  former  ones  reversed?  " 
"  Man,"  says  the  Koran,  "  prayeth  for  evil  as  he 
prayeth  for  good  ;  for  man  is  hasty." 

Let  us  not  think  ourselves  lost,  when  a  special  re- 
liance fails  us.  Let  us  rather  believe  that  the  sov- 
ereignties of  law  are  to  weave  all  things  for  the 
best  ends.  To  them  is  committed  our  destiny ;  that 
is  certain.  Let  us  then  be  swift  to  believe  that  they 
intend  our  education  and  our  elevation,  and  will 
achieve  this  as  they  best  can.  The  status  of  our  life 
at  this  moment  must  at  least  be  the  starting-point 
for  the  higher  issues.  What  has  befallen,  then,  is 
what  shall  and  must,  by  the  best  use  of  it,  be  made 
to  prove  best  in  the  end.  So  to  interpret  and  use  it 
is  religious  faith. 

Do  not  succumb  to  any  loss  as  irretrievable.     To 


344  GAIN   IN   LOSS. 

win  now  from  it  what  Heaven  will  make  of  it  at 
last  is  success. 

The  sweep  of  these  friendly  shuttles  covers  what 
we  bring  on  ourselves  likewise.  A  vice  is  indeed  a 
"  womb  of  future  pain ; "  but  the  pain  itself,  what 
is  that  ?  It  is  what  befriends,  what  saves  us.  The 
only  alternative  to  an  ignoble  and  useless  despair  is 
to  interpret  all  penalty  in  the  light  of  the  truth  that 
loss  cannot  stay  loss,  but  constantly  presses  towards 
conversion  into  the  good  it  intends. 

What  then  ?  Does  not  all  this  mean  Optimism  ? 
Certainly  it  means  that  all  power  of  growth  and  ser- 
vice depends,  know  it  or  not  as  we  may,  on  an  ideal 
faith  in  somewhat  all-sufficient,  unerring,  infinitely 
wise  and  tender,  inseparable  from  the  inmost  of  life, 
bent  on  our  good  as  we  are  not,  set  against  our  fail- 
ure as  we  cannot  be.  It  means  that  there  can  in 
fact  be  no  philosophy  of  life,  no  law  of  good,  no  be- 
lief in  duty,  no  aspiration,  but  must  have  such  in- 
dwelling perfection  as  being  alone  reliable  to  guar- 
antee its  word.  This  only  is  my  God ;  infinite 
ground  of  all  finite  being  ;  essence  of  reason  and 
good. 

The  fault  with  the  popular  superstition  of  special 
providences  is  that  it  does  not  make  Providence 
special  enough,  does  not  make  law  itself  our  Prov- 
idence, does  not  identify  it  with  the  inmost  human- 
ity of  us  and  the  normal  course  of  things  itself,  but 
makes  it  sit  aloof  and  put  in  a  finger  here  and  there, 
to  secure  us  happiness,  where  men's  imperfect  eye- 
sight cannot  detect  how  what  they  call  the  "un- 
aided "  laws  of  nature  could  have  delivered  them 
without  it.  No,  friends  !  To  the  laws  of  nature 
one  event  is  not  more  difficult  than  another;  they 


GAIN  IN   LOSS.  345 

are  never  unaided,  for  they  are  themselves  aid,  and 
aid  only ;  nor  is  there  one  effect  of  these  laws  in 
which  dwells  not  inwardly,  however  obscurely,  the 
same  Care  that  dwells  in  any  other,  let  this  have 
brought  us  what  delight  it  may. 

Nor  can  this  be  less  true  of  the  spiritual  than  of 
the  material  universe.  If  God  is  the  overruling 
good  that  penetrates  and  moves  and  guides,  that  in- 
forms and  energizes  every  law  of  spirit  and  matter  ; 
absent  from  no  instant  of  life,  from  no  current  of  ex- 
perience, from  no  vicissitude  of  the  lot,  then  you  can- 
not think,  you  cannot  grieve,  you  cannot  doubt,  nor 
even  sin  yourself  away  from  this  inherent  Care  that 
holds  every  strand  of  your  being,  so  slender  that  you 
know  not  of  its  existence,  and  guides  this  for  the  best 
by  a  love  that  is  its  own  eternal  necessity. 

What  then  is  the  sum  ?  To  trust  in  special  plan, 
desire,  happiness,  gift,  or  work,  as  guaranteed  by 
God,  as  outside  care  for  that  one  gift  or  work  is 
inadequate.  One  word  means  more  and  greater. 
Trust  life,  —  life  itself  as  a  whole,  as  life,  and  what- 
ever its  laws  bring.  Trust  it  not  because  you  can 
understand  all  it  means,  but  because  it  is  your  life 
and  your  destiny,  and  because  you  are  more  than 
understanding  or  experience,  knowing  how  to  honor 
your  ideal.  This  is  to  be  strong,  helpful,  and  of 
steadfast  cheer.  God  grant  us  this  :  no  prayer  can 
ask  for  more ;  no  power  suffice  with  less. 

This  philosophy  of  loss  and  gain  is  no  substitute 
for  hands  and  feet.  It  is  the  true  working  faith. 
No  room  for  a  quietism  that  expects  all  things  will 
come  right  of  themselves,  refusing  to  see  what  must 
be  suffered  and  sacrificed  before  the  common  good 
can  be  achieved,  —  no  room  for  this,  in  an  ideal  that 


346  GAIN  IN  LOSS. 

exalts  those  very  renunciations  which  the  quietist 
and  the  sentimentalist  dread  to  make.  Every  rela- 
tion and  institution  is  being  tried  by  fire.  And  it  is 
only  the  renunciation,  for  every  function  in  our  life, 
of  all  egotistic  claims  and  selfish  expectations  in  the 
conduct  of  it  that  can  make  the  fire  a  flame  of  crea- 
tion, and  not  destruction.  There  is  no  demoraliza- 
tion like  the  self-idolatry  that  claims  a  right  to  moral 
and  spiritual  values  without  paying  the  honest  price 
in  sacrifices  and  disciplines.  From  the  spiritist,  who 
thinks  he  gets  the  wisdom  of  Pythagoras  or  the  song 
of  Shelley  out  of  the  vaticinations  of  his  medium,  to 
the  public  manager,  who  expects  to  remove  deep  and 
wide-spread  vices  by  the  rapid  manipulation  of  them 
with  sweeping  machinery  of  votes  and  laws,  there  is 
the  same  delusion  of  ignoring  those  conditions  of  all 
growth  which  lie  in  personal  sacrifice,  discipline,  toil ; 
in  short,  in  paying  the  honest  price  for  your  object. 
In  a  transitional  time  it  is  the  grand  disciplines,  es- 
sential to  progress,  that  must  be  welcomed  as  the 
path  of  power.  It  is  just  these  men  try  hardest  to 
get  over,  while  they  are  the  substance  of  the  whole. 

The  penalties  which  society  dreads  the  most  are 
usually  the  narrow  paths  of  its  escape  from  dissolu- 
tion. If,  for  example,  the  crash  did  not  follow  over- 
speculation  ;  if  trying  to  pay  public  debts  in  a  depre- 
ciated legal  tender  did  not  ruin  credit ;  if  trade  were 
not  driven  to  confess  higher  forces  than  that  of 
"every  man  for  himself"  or  "his  class;"  if  pruri- 
ence and  self-pushing,  if  sensation  and  noise  of  num- 
bers, if  herding  and  massing,  the  high  pressure  of 
machinery  in  Church  and  State,  did  not  bring  their 
sure  penalties,  then,  indeed,  we  might  well  despair 
of  the  world,  for  it  would  be  a  farce  to  speak  of  jus- 


GAIN   IN  LOSS.  847 

tice,  of  responsibility,  of  personality,  or  of  God.  The 
selfish  instincts  having  full  swing,  the  earth  would 
go  to  the  beasts  apace.  I  know  it  is  said  that  mis- 
chiefs are  not  cured,  after  all,  by  the  stern  lessons  of 
penalty ;  that  nations  do  not  heed  them.  But  the 
ideas  that  ferment  in  modern  society  prove  the  con- 
trary. The  life  of  the  century,  teeming  with  be- 
neficent purpose,  rich  in  noble  enterprise  and  ideal 
aim,  disproves  it.  To  the  woes  and  pains  of  nations 
do  we  largely  owe  these  better  dreams  and  doings  ; 
they  are  shaped  on  the  forges  of  salutary  penalty. 
The  five  years  of  our  civil  war  were  the  healthiest, 
in  this  sense,  of  our  national  existence. 

"  We  ought,"  says  Plato,  "  to  pray  for  just  penal- 
ties as  the  best  gifts  of  the  gods."  Whenever  a  di- 
vine law  rights  itself  by  proving  wrong  to  be  wretch- 
edness every  good  man  hails  a  rainbow  that  shall 
overarch  the  world.  The  whelming  tide  wave  that 
carries  great  ships  crashing  among  the  rafters  of 
men's  island  homes,  and  the  red  lava  rolling  down 
on  Herculaneum  or  Naples,  are  appalling ;  but  the 
water-wall  is  but  gravitation,  and  the  volcano  is  a 
safety-valve.  If  the  world-preserving  laws  could  be 
suspended,  in  the  interest  of  twenty  cities  or  a  hun- 
dred isles,  we  might  well  be  inconsolable,  but  not  at 
the  destruction  of  even  so  many  as  these  by  the 
steadfast  operation  of  those  laws.  And  the  retribu- 
tive action  of  the  moral  laws  is  also  world-preserving 
in  a  higher  sense,  and  a  more  indispensable  one  still. 
But  in  one  thing  we  may  trust.  The  invariable 
moral  order  will  treat  us  according  to  our  need.  And 
it  is  simply  their  inherent  tendency  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  us  that  makes  them  invariable,  bring  they 
what  they  may. 


348  GAIN  IN   LOSS. 

And  I  fully  believe  that  the  storms  that  have 
broken  in  on  the  childish  security  and  self-indul- 
gence of  the  American  people  have  already  done 
great  good  to  their  spiritual  life,  little  credit  as  can 
be  claimed  for  any  wisdom  or  virtue  of  their  own,  in 
the  way  these  storms  were  met.  I  believe  there  is 
more  religion  in  America  of  the  better  sort  than  ever 
before  ;  not  the  religion  that  is  buzzing  and  swarm- 
ing about  its  denominational  hives,  hanging  on  the 
skirts  of  inherited  revelations  and  the  lips  of  a  pre- 
scribed divinity,  but  a  deeper  experience  behind  this, 
which  teaches  men  that  a  living  God  rules,  from 
within,  this  living  world  and  Nature,  its  garment  of 
beauty  and  use.  I  believe  that  even  minds  which 
still  cling  to  tradition  are  going  through  a  deeper 
education  than  the  Church  affords  them.  The  fur- 
rows of  its  plow  are  like  the  wheels  of  the  prophet's 
vision,  that  went  straight  forward  whither  the  Face 
above  them  was  turned.  They  are  enforced  sacri- 
fices of  prepossession,  interest,  instituted  form,  to  the 
larger  life  of  universal  principles  and  moral  sover- 
eignties. 

How  serious  with  this  significance  are  all  the  ques- 
tions which  loom  upon  us  as  we  look  over  the  rim 
of  what  is  so  plainly  an  opening  epoch  !  How  they 
all  touch  the  deepest  springs  of  society,  test  all  foun- 
dations, pierce  to  the  depths  of  personality,  of  faith, 
and  of  fear !  They  are  slow  to  be  settled ;  they  front 
us  so  formidably  because  they  are  but  opening  phases 
of  yet  profounder  revolutions.  It  is  because  they 
point  beyond  themselves  that  they  are  so  great  and 
bewildering ;  the  prophet  always  dazzles  us  by  the 
future  he  but  half  reveals. 

Thus  the  Chinese  question  touches  the  dark,  diffi- 


GAIN  IN  LOSS.  349 

cult  problems  of  labor  on  the  one  side,  and  the  great 
white  light  of  free  universal  religion  on  the  other. 
Even  the  Mormon  delusion  is  but  one  difficult  form 
in  which  the  question  how  to  guard  with  purity, 
equality,  and  unity  the  shrine  of  the  family,  on  which 
civilization  rests,  is  coming  up  for  solution.  The 
reconstruction  question  still  reaches  out  into  vast  un- 
developed problems  of  the  relations  of  races  under 
the  laws  of  their  indefeasible  brotherhood.  The  yet 
unsolved  question  how  to  reconcile  political  equality 
with  respect  for  the  authority  that  wise  and  just  per- 
sons properly  possess,  to  guide  the  ignorant  and  rule 
the  unworthy,  fronts  us  at  every  step  in  political 
progress.  To  what  untried  experiments  and  subtle 
relations  of  social  construction,  as  well  as  to  what 
sacrifice  of  the  prejudices  of  centuries,  do  the  irref- 
utable claims  of  woman,  social  and  political,  point ! 
And  the  demands  of  labor,  as  yet  confounded  with 
the  desires  and  expectations  of  special  self-styled 
classes,  open  out  into  the  more  bewildering  problem 
of  the  Organization  of  Industry  ;  a  sea  wherein  the 
boldest  navigators  are  glad  to  take  in  sail  and  hug 
the  shore.  Again,  with  what  a  gigantic  hand,  ma- 
terial consolidation  is  pressing  on  the  still  unde- 
veloped moral  capacity  of  individuals  and  nations, 
with  railroad  and  telegraph  that  go  round  the  globe, 
bringing  the  whole  race  in  infinite  detail  upon  each 
private  brain  and  heart.  Quinet  said  finely  that  "  if 
the  Church  does  not  convoke  them,  God  holds  his 
Ecumenicals  in  every  age  of  history."  What,  then, 
shall  we  say  of  a  time  when  every  question  and  fact 
you  touch  is  ecumenical,  whether  in  science,  in  com- 
merce, in  politics,  or  in  faith?  In  reconciling  a 
world-life  like  this  with  the  culture  of  the  personal 


350  GAIN   IN   LOSS. 

mind  and  character,  bow  many  narrow  interests  must 
be  abandoned,  how  many  dreams  of  individual  sway 
and  world-management  by  system  and  dogma  and 
institution  must  be  surrendered  ! 

Of  all  this  we  see  neither  the  end,  nor  scarce  the 
beginning  ;  yet  we  know  that  the  eternal  law  of  gain 
by  loss,  of  growth  by  change  of  form,  of  inspiration 
by  sacrifice,  will  glorify  the  whole.  With  the  day 
the  light,  with  the  road  the  strength  to  tread  it.  It 
takes  longer  time  to  grow  by  stern  discipline  than 
by  intuition,  by  enforcement  of  moral  law  than  by 
spontaneity  of  love ;  but  what  the  sweetest  saint  is 
learning  in  his  intimacies  with  the  Spirit  the  nations 
are  earning  through  their  sorrows  and  their  storms. 

As  the  vapors  that  work  in  the  boiling  lava  crys- 
tallize, as  it  cools,  into  lovely  forms  of  sheaves  and 
flowers  and  finest  rays  on  the  walls  of  its  hidden 
cavities,  waiting  till  the  slow  frosts  and  suns  or  the 
quick  hammer  (of  the  geologist)  shall  open  them  to 
view,  so  in  the  hot  depths  of  this  fermenting  age 
there  have  been  shaping  finer  issues  than  any  of  us 
dream  of,  and  coming  years  will  show  what  delicate 
structures  were  organizing  in  the  stirred  soul  of  man, 
which  no  eye  had  noted  while  the  hand  of  Eternal 
Order  wrought  them  in  the  dark. 

Grander  than  all  failure  of  wrong  recurs  without 
failure  the  ideal  right.  Over  the  rim  of  the  open- 
ing epoch  we  see  its  unfading  sun.  Come  what  may, 
to  each  or  to  all,  it  is  the  dignity  and  the  sweetness 
of  life  to  trust  that. 


THE  SEARCH  FOR  GOD.i 


There  is  a  noble  saying  of  Augustine,  which  will 
long  outlive  his  denunciations  of  human  nature  as 
a  diabolic  power :  "  Thou  hast  made  us,  O  God,  for 
thyself ;  and  our  souls  are  restless  till  they  come  to 
thee."  It  was  never  more  timely  than  it  is  now 
to  study  the  track  of  this  indispensable  gravitation 
which  all  history  confesses;  this  aspiration  of  man's 
religious  nature,  as  subject  to  its  object,  to  find  it- 
self inwardly  and  essentially  one  therewith. 

For  there  was  never  more  said  than  now  in  criti- 
cism of  the  term  "  religion,"  and  of  what  it  claims  to 
mean  ;  in  the  name  of  faculties,  too,  that  are  forever 
valid.  Many  intelligent  persons  are  inclined  to 
leave  the  word  out  of  their  dictionary  ;  and  there  is 
not  merely  a  great  deal  of  loose  denunciation  of  men 
as  atheists  by  those  who  have  as  blind  a  horror  of 
theism  as  they  have  of  atheism,  and  hardly  know 
any  difference  between  them,  but  a  great  deal  of 
equal  vagueness  and  delusion  in  claiming  to  be  athe- 
ist. And  I  begin  by  putting  in  this  ancient  affir- 
mation in  rebuttal  at  once  of  the  charges  and  the 
claims,  —  *'  restless  till  we  find  God." 

But  the  language  must  have  other  meaning  than 
that  materialistic  one  of  search  after  an  outward 
1  Reprinted  from  TAe  Radical  for  April,  1870. 


352  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

object,  which  makes  dogmatic  theology  such  an  of- 
fense to  the  best  science  and  speculation  of  our  time. 
The  deep  confession  of  all  human  history  —  it  may 
surely  mean  this :  that  we  cannot  do  without  believ- 
ing, in  some  form,  that  Life  itself,  in  our  inmost 
identity  with  it,  is  pure,  all-sufficient  wisdom  and 
care  ;  that  we  all  would  find  Truth,  would  see  Good ; 
never  loving  error  because  it  is  error,  never  avoiding 
right  because  it  is  right ;  that  liberty  comes  only  in 
the  recognition  of  moral  order  and  spiritual  perfection 
as  the  ground  of  our  being  and  our  growth,  and  in  a 
spontaneous  delight  in  these  which  proves  the  human 
to  be  vitally  divine ;  that  we  find  ourselves  fettered 
and  miserable  in  disobeying  the  laws  of  our  physical 
and  moral  nature,  or  offending  against  the  sense  we 
have  of  what  is  highest  and  best.  It  means  that  we 
are  bound  to  learn  that  only  such  living  as  is  eter- 
nally just  and  noble  has  the  sovereign  powers  of  our 
life  on  its  side ;  that  it  is  only  in  the  ideal  we  live  for, 
the  aspiration  to  perfection,  to  see,  trust,  adore,  the 
best,  to  become  one  with  it,  and  even  generate  it, 
that  we  can  be  really  one  with  ourselves.  Now  it 
may  not  be  according  to  the  definitions  set  forth  in 
catechisms  or  confessions,  nor  to  the  imagery  of  crea- 
tive power  in  the  old  Shemitic  Bible,  to  call  all  this 
the  seeking  and  finding  of  God.  It  has  nothing  to 
do  with  "  fiat  of  creation,"  nor  with  "  plan  of  salva- 
tion." Yet  it  is  really  the  substance  of  all  genuine 
religious  vision  and  life.  And  if  it  were  recognized 
as  such,  there  would  probably  be  an  end  of  many 
blind  charges  of  atheism  that  are  brought  against 
devout  men,  and  of  a  great  many  claims  put  in  by 
good  and  true  men  to  be  atheists.  Moreover,  it 
would  greatly  encourage  us  in  the  hope  to  see  relig- 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD.  353 

ion  justified,  the  name  itself  freed  from  meanings 
that  repel  honest  minds,  and  a  better  idea  prevail  of 
the  spiritual  capabilities  and  dispositions  of  men  in 
general. 

In  this  sense  I  do  not  hesitate  to  affirm,  and  to 
urge  the  belief  as  of  the  utmost  moment,  that  there 
is  no  one  who  does  not  intrinsically  desire  to  find 
God.  There  is  no  one  of  rational  mind  who  is  not 
restless  till  he  sees  truth  and  does  justice,  and  rests 
under  a  perfect  care  involved  in  the  substance  of  his 
being.  Let  our  faults  be  what  they  may,  we  are  all 
in  some  way  or  other  feeling  after  life  that  solves  all 
experience  and  makes  all  lives  one.  We  do  not 
want  to  be  cheated  out  of  the  highest  and  best :  we 
want  it  more  than  all  we  have  or  are.  Will  such  an 
one  pay  the  price  ?  Yes,  if  you  can  make  it  clear  to 
him  that  you  have  brought  him  what  is  really  a  way 
to  that.  Take  what  track  he  may,  God  is  shaping 
his  experience,  and  has  deeper  hold  on  his  tides  and 
currents  than  all  other  attractions,  after  all.  We 
admire  the  thought  that  genius  "cannot  free  itself 
from  God."  But  what  is  human  nature  itself  but 
the  genius  of  God  ? 

In  view  of  this  inherent  necessity,  this  inner  move- 
ment, so  little  understood,  of  instinct,  process,  proph- 
ecy,—  involving  inalienable  possession  of  the  soul 
by  its  own  higher  relations,  —  there  is  no  possibility 
of  essential  or  absolute  atheism.  Yet  there  is  a 
negative  attitude,  conscious  or  unconscious,  towards 
the  really  divine  in  certain  directions,  which  may 
properly  be  called  relative  atheism. 

And  this  in  two  very  different  forms,  whereof  the 
one  is  speculative,  the  other  practical.  But  both  ap- 
pear to  depend  on  deficiency  of  supplies  from  the 

23 


354  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

moral  element,  though  in  ways  carefully  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  each  other.  In  the  one  case  its  fail- 
ure is  scientific,  in  the  other  it  is  personal.  In  the 
one  it  is  the  intellect  that  is  robbed,  in  the  other  the 
heart  and  life. 

I.  Look  first  at  physical  science.  The  crown  of 
civilization  is  the  reverent  recognition  and  use  of 
universal  laws.  Now,  every  law  of  nature  should 
help  reveal  the  essential  Providence  involved  in 
beauty,  order,  good.  Behind  all  law  is  life,  which 
alone  constitutes  its  energy.  And  so  the  unities  and 
stabilities  which  science  unfolds  in  nature  should 
merge  nature  to  our  thought  in  Intelligence,  one  and 
perfect.  Yet  much  modern  thought  about  nature 
calls  itself  positive  science,  in  virtue,  partly,  of  stand- 
ing in  negative  relations  towards  this  very  basis  on 
which  laws  and  phenomena  rest.  According  to  Mr. 
Huxley,  whom  I  do  not,  however,  adduce  as  atheis- 
tic, by  any  means,  "  it  makes  no  difference  whether 
thought  be  regarded  as  a  form  of  matter,  or  matter 
as  a  quality  of  thought."  But  it  makes  a  great  deal ; 
for  without  intelligence  at  the  root  of  things,  things 
become  to  intellect  itself  the  root  of  intelligence  ;  the 
mind  sees  itself  as  a  mere  result  of  material  sub- 
stances ;  hence  a  mere  finite  result,  secondary  to 
matter,  and  created  somehow  by  stock  and  stone, 
not  divinely  surrounding  and  involving  them.  Your 
dream  of  beauty,  your  ideal  of  right,  has  then  to  ask 
authority  from  mineral  and  vegetable ;  your  liberty 
to  will,  hope,  aspire,  love,  takes  limits  from  the  round 
of  physical  successions,  and  waits  on  the  unprogres- 
sive  rules  of  unconscious  matter.  The  imagination 
shall  find  sanction  for  its  intimations  of  things  un- 
seen and  unfathomable  nowhere  but  in  the  dead  ma- 


THE  SEARCH   FOR  GOD.  355 

terials  it  uses  feebly  to  convey  these  to  the  outward 
sense.  It  is  itself  but  the  product  of  cerebral  con- 
volutions, and  of  the  food  that  nourishes  them. 
Homer  and  jiEschylus,  Plato,  Isaiah,  and  Jesus, 
Shakespeare  and  Goethe,  the  Bibles  and  the  dramas, 
''Psalm  of  Praise"  and  ''  Ode  of  Immortality,"  are 
evolutions  from  phosphorus  and  carbon,  and  resolva- 
ble, it  should  seem,  by  chemical  analysis,  back  into 
acid  and  salt.  Finally,  "  protoplasm  "  did  it  all ;  and 
we  have  made  the  crowning  discovery  of  the  basis 
of  this  in  the  slime  spread  over  the  bottom  of  the  sea  ! 

Now  protoplasm  is  a  fine  word,  nowise  to  be 
scorned ;  but  old  Anaxagoras  went  behind  and  be- 
yond it,  more  than  twenty  centuries  ago,  when 
he  pronounced  the  simpler  word  iVows,  or  Mind. 
Whether  thought  be  regarded  as  a  property  of  mat- 
ter, or  matter  a  quality  of  thought,  may  make  no  dif- 
ference within  the  limits  of  crucible  and  retort.  But 
what  if  those  divine  men  had  thoroughly  accepted 
the  former  proposition,  and  all  it  involves  of  spiritual 
attitude  and  method  ?  Would  they  have  trusted  the 
"  glory  and  the  dream  "  that  now  makes  man's  hard- 
est struggle  with  outward  conditions  prophetic,  and 
life  itself  majestic,  through  its  relations  to  the  Infi- 
nite and  Eternal? 

But  much  of  our  "  positivism  "  insists,  even  more 
negatively,  that  intelligence  does  not  stand  behind  or 
within  what  are  called  physical  laws.  And  what  is 
or  the  reason  ?  Nothing,  certainly,  in  the  conditions 
revelations  of  science ;  which  indeed  refutes  all  tra- 
ditions of  arbitrary  or  capricious  Godhead,  but  only 
makes  evident  what  is  divinest  in  intelligence  itself, 
—  namely,  immutable  order  and  serene,  all-sustain- 
ing law. 


356  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

Speculative  scientific  atheism  comes  of  the  effort 
to  separate  the  scientific  from  the  moral  element. 
For  it  is  mainly  through  our  perception  of  the  just, 
the  wise,  the  good,  the  fair  (moral  predicates  all), 
that  intelligence  can  be  recognized  behind  and  within 
laws  of  nature.  This  is  in  largest  degree  a  moral 
experience.  No  other  can  so  quicken  the  sense  of 
that  mystery  of  life  on  which  the  material  world 
rests,  out  of  which  it  is  continually  renewed.  Dead, 
stiff,  merciless,  inexorable,  mindless,  and  purposeless 
is  it,  but  for  this  eyesight  kindled  from  the  heart 
and  conscience.  This  only  hears  the  Eternal  Voice, 
finds  the  Benignant  Will,  and  makes  the  universe 
adequate  response  of  Spirit  to  our  spiritual  desire. 
Truth  of  truth,  it  is  not  to  be  dismissed  as  *'  mere 
poetry  and  sentimentality,"  that  "  from  the  soul  must 
issue  forth  the  glory  of  the  earth  and  sky ;  "  that  the 
light  we  see  by  is  "  the  light  that  never  was  on  sea 
or  land."  Fail  to  carry  this  idealism  into  our  sci- 
ence, and  no  analysis  will  ever  bring  us  God  ;  in  other 
words,  disclose  the  Infinite  and  Eternal  Good,  in  that 
direction.  Out  of  gases,  minerals,  forms,  colors,  or- 
gans, there  shall  come  invariable  successions ;  shall 
come  rules  and  phenomena,  ending  in  all-creative 
"  protoplasm,"  but  nothing  more.  And  you  arrive  at 
Mr.  Huxley's  crowning  prediction,  that  "science  will 
teach  us  to  dispense  with  the  notion  of  spontaneity 
and  spirit."  You  come  beyond  that  to  the  conclu- 
sion of  certain  French  positivists,  that  science  ought 
to  be  and  must  be  atheist.  And,  indeed,  there  is 
much  groundless  concession  by  many,  who  should 
find  better  meaning  for  the  name  of  theism,  that 
modern  science  is  in  fact,  as  such,  atheistic,  —  a 
statement  which  is  nowise  admissible  in  any  but  the 


THE  SEARCH   FOR   GOD.  357 

most  superficial  sense.  In  nothing  is  the  inadequacy 
of  the  merely  analytic  process  shown  more  conclu- 
sively than  in  its  dealing  with  things  spiritual  in  the 
interest  of  science.  It  never  reveals  truth  in  its 
divine  form  of  life ;  to  dissect,  it  must  destroy.  It 
cannot  see  any  element  of  existence,  as  existent; 
for  each  lives  in  its  active  relations  to  the  others. 
Analysis,  however  useful  in  its  way,  slays  this  beau- 
tiful unity  in  which  life  and  power  dwell ;  there  is 
left  a  heap  of  dead  fibres  and  organs ;  and  what 
resemblance  is  there  to  the  living  body,  when  you 
have  put  these  together  again  ?  Phosphorus  in  the 
growing  grain  is  food  for  human  brains  ;  but  extract 
the  phosphorus  by  chemical  process,  and  it  is  poison. 
Being  must  be  seen  in  its  natural  and  vital  relations, 
or  it  is  not  seen  at  all.  Thus  science  cannot  be  de- 
fiined  as  distinct  from  faith  without  destroying  it: 
there  can  be  no  science  without  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious forms  of  faith,  —  faith  in  the  faculties,  faith  in 
nature,  faith  in  law  and  in  unity.  You  cannot  cut 
off  revelation  from  evolution  or  culture ;  for  there  is 
no  genuine  culture  which  is  not  revelation,  however 
imperfect.  And  when  we  try  to  separate  the  intel- 
lectual from  the  moral  and  spiritual  relations,  we 
lose  the  living  bond  which  makes  the  essential  truth 
of  each.  Science  becomes  an  autopsy,  and  nature 
has  no  informing  soul. 

The  "  positive  "  scientist  regards  God  as  at  best  a 
hypothesis,  and  refers  it  to  that  silent  deep  of  the 
unknown  that  rounds  all  we  know  or  dream.  But 
how  eloquent  is  that  silence  !  —  how  calm,  benignant, 
creative !  The  stillness  of  all  greatness  !  Can  we 
for  an  instant  believe  that  it  is  not  Life  ? 

Now,  speculative  atheism  of  course  does  not  imply 


358  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

non-recognition  of  moral  distinctions ;  it  brings  no 
disparagement  upon  one's  private  conscience  or  heart. 
It  means,  however,  that  he  does  not  let  his  moral 
intuitions  enter  into  his  theory  of  physical  processes 
and  lav7S  ;  that  he  tries  to  hold  the  two  apart,  or  at 
all  events  does  not  allow  his  own  moral  constitution 
to  determine  his  interpretation  of  laws,  or  his  notion 
of  what  law  itself  means  and  implies.  But  the 
moral  constitution  being  cheated  of  its  scientific 
rights  by  this  dangerous  analysis,  which  "  murders  to 
dissect,"  science  becomes  able  to  reveal  nothing  but 
dead  mechanism.  That  is  owing  to  his  speculative 
theory.  Only  a  theological  bigot  would  infer  either 
that  he  was  in  all  this  lacking  in  manly  virtues,  or 
that  he  had  come  to  be  either  absolutely  or  practi- 
cally atheist.  But  certainly  his  faith  in  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  just  and  good  must  be  weakened,  if  he 
fail  to  see  them  as  the  law  of  the  universe,  every- 
where authoritative  and  divine.  It  is  not  necessary 
that  he  should  be  able  to  see  how  or  wherein  all  phys- 
ical laws  are  wise  and  just  and  fair ;  but  it  is  of  great 
importance  that  he  not  only  believe  it  wise  and  just 
and  fair  that  they  should  he  so,  but  that  he  keep  that 
faith  as  a  basis  of  scientific  study.  Then  law  be- 
comes life,  and  "  force "  is  but  another  name  for 
thought  and  love. 

Ascend  to  the  next  sphere,  from  the  science  of 
nature  to  the  science  of  mind.  Here  the  same  diffi- 
culties arise  out  of  the  refusal  of  scientific  validity 
to  the  moral  intuitions.  And  in  consequence  of  this 
unnatural  separation,  you  find  certain  philosophers 
inclining  to  the  belief  that  metaphysics  also  are 
properly  atheistic. 

"  What  I  cannot  understand,"  say  these  philoso- 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD.  359 

phers,  "is  unknowable  by  me.  What  is  uncondi- 
tioned by  my  faculties  is  beyond  them,  and  so  incon- 
ceivable. God,  therefore,  is  not  given  in  metaphys- 
ics. He  must  be,  if  found  at  all,  an  object  of  faith." 
But  they  gain  nothing  so,  for  faith  cannot  change 
the  faculties  ;  otherwise,  what  becomes  of  metaphys- 
ical science  itself,  which  rests  on  the  steadfastness 
of  the  mental  laws  and  processes  ?  Is  it  to  faith  in 
a  ''revelation"  that  we  are  remanded?  So  Mr. 
Mansel  would  imply.  But  that  also  must  be  some 
form  of  faith  by  the  natural  faculties.  It  is  they 
that  must  by  their  own  laws  perceive,  prove,  and  ac- 
cept the  so-called  revelation.  And  so  it  all  comes 
back  again  to  faith  in  the  faculties  ;  and,  in  fact,  the 
revelation  required  can  only  be  given  in  them.  On, 
then,  with  your  metaphysics,  or  science  of  the  human 
mind,  O  philosopher  !  It  is  God  there  or  nowhere. 
And  why  do  you  not  find  him  there  ?  Because  you 
are  trying  to  separate  your  head  from  your  heart 
and  your  soul.  The  powers  must  act  together,  as  a 
unit.  Would  you  not  make  the  universe  a  skeleton 
flower,  green  life  gone  out  of  it  by  your  metaphysical 
acids,  dead,  white  framework  only  remaining,  then 
carry  your  moral  sense  with  you  ;  its  innate  royalties 
are  the  soul  of  every  realm.  When  you  see  a  func- 
tion of  memory,  or  a  law  of  perception,  let  your  nat- 
ural piety  recognize  it  as  wise  and  just  and  good  and 
fair.  Be  loyal  to  the  moral  authority  that  afi&rms  it 
ought  to  be,  and  somehow  must  be.  Let  your  soul 
bring  in  the  leap  of  your  mind  to  grasp  it.  Then, 
if  you  cannot  see  God  in  perfect,  absolute  essence, 
you  will  know  the  Infinite  and  Eternal  in  their  re- 
lation to  real  and  positive  existence  ;  feel  their  free- 
dom in  your  own  ;    know  their  inseparableness  from 


360  THE   SEARCH   FOR    GOD. 

every  movement  of  your  spiritual  being.  Metaphys- 
ics do  not  prove  God,  but  why  should  they  hide  him  ? 
He  is  their  moral  and  spiritual  basis,  and  proves 
them.  Metaphysics  have  a  right  to  be  religion,  if 
the  mind  and  its  laws  are  essentially  in  accord  with 
eternal  realities ;  and  if  they  do  not  recognize  the 
fact,  it  is  because  they  abdicate  their  own  conditions, 
and  insist  on  saying  to  that  sense  of  the  morally  fit 
and  right,  which  involves  wisdom,  beauty,  truth,  and 
good,  "  I  know  you  not  as  having  anything  to  do 
with  intellectual  science." 

Ascend  another  step,  into  what  may  be  distinct- 
ively called  the  sphere  of  worship.  Here  at  least 
God  must  be  found,  we  should  say,  if  anywhere. 
But  what  a  fact  now  meets  us  !  Even  Christianity, 
with  all  its  pretension  to  be  the  typical  religion,  rests 
in  a  representative  of  God.  Its  Christ  supplants  the 
Infinite  and  Eternal ;  and  again  the  essential  rela- 
tion of  man's  spiritual  intuitions  to  deity  is  denied. 
As  the  positivist  and  the  metaphysician  set  deity 
aside  because  they  cannot  comprehend  it,  so  the 
Christian  believer  for  the  same  reason.  He  covers 
up  the  negation  by  putting  a  man  in  place  of  God, 
who  forthwith  becomes  an  ''  impalpable  effluence " 
from  this  one  personage,  or  else  a  divine-human  form 
embodied  therein.  Only  in  the  face  of  this  "  express 
image,"  "  fullness  of  Godhead  bodily,"  "  mediator," 
"  master,"  can  the  living  God  be  adequately  known  ! 

The  universal  demand  for  incarnation,  or  avatar, 
is  here  confined  to  one  central  form.  God  must  be 
manifested,  once  for  all,  as  perfect,  in  this.  And  so 
the  inevitably  mperfect,  limited  form  comeg  to  swal- 
low up  the  substance ;  and,  however  the  symbol 
may  have  brought  noble  traits  and    thoughts    into 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD.  861 

honor,  and  served  high  purposes  for  a  time,  it  be- 
comes a  drawback  when  the  matured  soul  demands 
liberty  to  find  God  in  all  forms  of  experience  and 
culture. 

We  do  not  call  this  atheism,  since  it  insists  it  has 
found  God ;  though  showing  us  simply  a  man,  his- 
torically vague,  and  without  the  guarantee  of  even  an 
ideal  unity  of  character,  but  standing  for  many  di- 
verse conceptions  and  mutually  exclusive  standards. 
We  do  not  call  it  atheism,  though  it  is  certainly  not 
pure  theism.  Yet  it  involves  much  speculative  ne- 
gation towards  the  immanence  of  deity  in  the  moral 
being,  and  much  practical  negation  towards  the  de- 
mands of  this  divine  inherence  upon  our  faith  in 
freedom  and  progress. 

We  saw  the  result  of  leaving  these  elements  of 
consciousness  out  of  physics  and  metaphysics.  The 
positivist  Comte  turns  the  Infinite  over  to  the  meta- 
physicians :  he  will  not  have  God  in  natural  science. 
The  Mansel  school  of  metaphysicians  turn  him  over 
to  "  revelation,"  as  equally  out  of  place  in  the  science 
of  mind.  In  just  the  same  way  the  worshiper  of 
supernatural  revelation  consigns  him  over  to  the 
dreamy  realm  of  intangible  essences,  and  puts  an  im- 
perfect, historical  person,  with  whose  recorded  or 
transmitted  life  the  human  ideal  of  deity  is  held 
bound  somehow  or  other  to  find  and  keep  itself  rec- 
onciled, in  his  place.  And  the  same  reason  is  thought 
valid  in  all  three  instances,  namely,  that  God  is  in- 
comprehensible and  unknowable,  and  hence  to  hu- 
man conceptions,  in  those  three  spheres,  as  good  as 
non-existent. 

A  moment's  reflection  shows  us  that  in  the  last- 
mentioned  sphere  also,  as  in  the  two  former,  the  diffi- 


362  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

culty  lies  in  a  disparagement  of  the  moral  element 
(as  we  have  already  defined  it).  Take  this  into  re- 
ligious inquiry,  as  essential  to  the  very  powers  that 
are  to  solve  the  problem,  and  Deity  comes  home  in 
what  is  nearer  than  physical  nature,  than  metaphys- 
ical philosophy,  than  venerated  persons,  and  yet  is 
the  substance  of  good  in  them  all ;  as  ideal  princi- 
ples, justice,  wisdom,  goodness,  beauty,  truth,  are  be- 
yond limitation  by  personalities,  beyond  special  reve- 
lations, beyond  ecclesiastical  traditions.  They  lift  us 
into  the  freedom  of  the  Eternal  and  Infinite.  They 
are,  by  this  transcendence,  the  never-failing  inspira- 
tion of  growth,  and  the  Providence  that  enfolds  and 
shapes  to  highest  issues  all  private  and  public  experi- 
ence. What,  then,  if  God  be  *'  incomprehensible"? 
Is  it  necessary  to  comprehend  what  infinite  love  is,  in 
order  to  apprehend  that  the  very  substance  of  our  be- 
ing is  mysteriously  identified  with  whatsoever  love 
in  its  essence  means  ?  Must  we  be  able  to  define  or 
figure  to  ourselves  the  conception  of  eternity,  in  order 
to  know  that  truth  is  eternal,  and  that  right  human 
living  is  eternal  life  ?  Must  we  bind  our  commun- 
ion with  the  just,  the  good,  the  true,  the  humanly 
adequate  and  becoming,  to  some  personal  life,  some 
special  body  of  social  circumstances,  some  individ- 
ual's work  in  human  progress  and  upon  human  ideal- 
ism ?  How  should  that  be,  when  the  principles  into 
which  the  moral  sense  flowers  out  in  its  maturity  as 
spiritual  liberty  essentially  involve  a  freely  advanc- 
ing ideal,  at  every  new  stage  revealing  more  of 
God,  whom  nothing  but  such  universal  energy  can 
adequately  reveal  ? 

11.  Let  us  go  a  step  further.     What  is  practical 
atheism  on  these  principles  ? 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD.  363 

The  question  of  positive  and  negative  in  religion 
is  one  of  character,  of  essential  morality  ;  not  that 
bondage  to  outwardly  imposed  rules  which  goes  cur- 
rently by  the  name  of  morality,  but  the  essential  re- 
lations of  the  soul  to  what  is  eternally  just,  beautiful, 
and  true.  And  whatever  intellectual  skepticism 
may  deny,  it  is  only  moral  denial  that  makes  practi- 
cal religious  unbelief.  And  that  which  one's  char- 
acter may  make  him  believe  is  often  a  darker  and 
drearier  unbelief  than  words  can  express. 

"  Every  man,"  it  was  said  of  old,  *'  walketh  in  his 
own  God."  Every  man  sees  by  the  light  of  his  own 
character.  What  he  is  goes  straight  up  into  his 
ideal,  and  under  these  limitations  he  conceives  the 
eternal  reality.  '*  Membership  of  the  body  of  Christ" 
does  not  save  him  from  this  profounder  membership 
of  his  own  personality ;  and  whether  he  adore  the 
Messiah  who  promised  to  come  in  the  clouds  of  a 
judgment -day  eighteen  hundred  years  ago,  or  the 
Buddha  who  ascended  into  nirvana,  not  to  return 
from  that  eternal  peace,  it  is  the  life  he  has  him- 
self shaped  out  of  present  moral  forces  within  him 
that  determines  what  the  one  person  or  the  other 
shall  be  to  him.     "  We  receive  but  what  we  give." 

And  so  there  are  many  objects  of  sight  that  are 
called  God  ;  but  the  only  way  of  seeing  God  must 
be  through  real  participation  of  essential  truth  and 
good.  However  numerous  the  unrealities  that  go 
by  that  name,  yet  God  is  real.,  is  reality  itself ;  and 
to  live  in  and  through  these  eternal  principles  is  so 
far  to  find  reality  and  to  be  reality. 

Now  selfishness,  whatever  its  creed,  sees  a  being 
aloof  from  human  nature  and  life,  intent  only  on  ag- 
grandizing himself.     This  is  properly  but  blank  noth- 


364  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

ingness  and  emptiness  of  deity,  since  there  is  nothing 
divine  in  selfish  appropriation.  Corrupt  and  mis- 
chievous habits  in  trading  will  fashion  a  trading  god, 
venal  and  barbarian,  a  gigantic  mirage  of  the  market 
thrown  up  against  the  sky  upon  the  background  of 
a  mean  and  tricky  world.  It  is  the  shadow  of  the 
man's  shop-life,  and  the  soul  of  the  universe  has  none 
the  more  to  do  with  it  from  the  fact  that  he  calls 
it  God.  There  is  no  such  atheist  as  he  who  laughs 
in  his  sleeve  when  you  speak  to  him  of  principles. 
This  is  an  atheism  one's  own  soul  must  judge  and  re- 
fute, —  his  soul  craving  bread,  but  fed  with  stones. 

What  is  the  self-pushing  politician's  God  but  a 
compromise  between  the  true  and  the  popular,  ready 
to  be  thrust  aside  into  the  third  heavens  as  poor, 
dumb  abstraction,  even  at  that,  when  not  wanted  in 
politics  ?  But  is  this  God  reality  ?  He  is  the  shadow 
of  political  atheism ;  another  huge  mirage  of  immo- 
rality. What  cares  the  demagogue  for  this  fetich  of 
his  own  making?  He  swears  by  a  new  one  with 
every  political  turn.  They  are  all  of  the  slime  of 
the  earth. 

The  domineering  dogmatist  has  his  "God,"  —  the 
man  who  insists  on  what  he  calls  an  "  authoritative 
religion  ;  "  who  says,  "  Believe  in  Christ,  or  you  go 
to  perdition  ;  believe  in  the  church  of  Christ,  or  he 
shall  deny  you  at  the  last  day."  And  what  kind  of 
deity  can  this  spiritual  martinet  see  ?  Another 
shadow,  projected  from  his  own  falsities  ;  a  despot, 
whose  war  against  freedom  of  conscience  is  waged 
by  fulmination  of  pope,  or  craft  of  priest,  or  the  civil 
arm,  or  the  subtle  poison  of  the  confessional,  or  the 
dreadful  preaching  of  wrathful  judgment  and  eternal 
woe ;    who,  driven  from  inquisition  and  auto-da-fe^ 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD.  365 

and  made  ridiculous  in  a  papal  syllabus  excommu- 
nicating civilization,  yet  lurks  in  close -communion 
churches,  rages  in  revival  convulsions,  writes  fool- 
ish tracts,  and  invents  wicked  stories  to  scare  weak 
nerves.  An  "  authoritative  Christian  "  shall  think 
this  very,  real  divinity.  But  what  is  it  save  mirage, 
again;  refracted  folly,  bigotr^^,  tyranny,  and  fear? 
Men  who  have  shaped  such  a  miserable  phantasm, 
and  called  it  God,  are  apt  to  cry  out  in  the  self-com- 
placency of  their  faith  in  it,  "  Thanks  to  our  God, 
we  are  not  merely  moral  men  !  "  "  Merely  "  moral ! 
"  Merely  "  in  accord  with  principles  that  yield  the 
beauty,  the  joy,  and  the  liberty  of  oneness  with  na- 
ture and  the  soul !  But  morality  may  well  answer, 
somewhat  sternly,  "  Thou  who  chargest  another  with 
living  without  God  in  the  world,  because  living  by 
character  alone,  what  wouldst  thou  give  him  —  grant- 
ing he  is  an  atheist  even,  in  the  honesty  of  his  specu- 
lative search  —  in  place  of  his  presumed  unbelief  ? 
A  God  without  principles  ;  a  God  of  mere  power, 
brute  might  overmastering  conscience,  reason,  love  ? 
Nature  knows  no  such.  The  soul,  thine  own  soul, 
when  once  trusted  for  her  nobler  instincts,  disowns 
the  fiction." 

Then  there  is  the  spoiled  child  of  fashion,  frippery, 
conventionality,  the  frivolous  person  with  "  happi- 
ness "  for  "  being's  end  and  aim,"  who  finds  it  so 
pleasant  to  enjoy,  so  troublesome  to  sympathize,  so 
needless  to  think,  so  useless  to  suffer,  so  stupid  to 
labor  for  any  ideal  end,  —  a  sapless  plant :  for  moral 
aspirations,  desires  of  what  is  noble  and  just,  are  the 
circulating  ichor  of  life.  Even  he  thinks  it  means 
something  when  men  speak  of  God ;  though  but  as 
vain  words  babbled  in  dreams,  life  has  dim  sugges- 


366  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

tion  even  to  such  an  one  of  overruling  power.  But 
what  can  the  shadow  of  an  inanity  be  ?  What  can 
be  known  of  the  Infinite  Artist,  the  Eternal  Source 
of  moral  energy,  the  God  wlio  stirs  the  souls  of  mar- 
tyrs and  saints,  by  a  poor  sniffer  of  the  air,  a  watcher 
of  flying  clouds  ? 

Such  is  practical  atheism,  rooted  in  moral  defect. 
Yet  it  is  not  absolute  even  in  the  worst :  the  mirage 
nowise  exhausts  the  power  of  vision.  The  morbid 
eye  sees  wrongly  ;  yet,  while  it  is  an  eye,  its  sense  of 
the  real  cannot  wholly  fail ;  and  the  soul,  essentially 
a  seer,  must  at  last  see  its  own  relations  in  their 
truth,  the  practical  unity  of  the  human  and  divine. 

III.  Besides  speculative  and  practical  atheism, 
there  is  another  way  in  which  the  universal  and  eter- 
nal is  lost  sight  of,  and  the  search  for  Deity  fails. 

Superstitious  fantasy  has  had  much  to  do  with 
the  formation  of  religious  beliefs.  Imagination  sees 
real  and  eternal  relations  ;  but  fancy,  under  the  power 
of  vague  emotions,  beclouds  all  relations  with  the 
transient  and  superficial  imagery  of  supernaturalisra. 
It  is  affirmative  in  form.  It  speaks  confidently  of 
God,  as  if  it  knew  him  intimately.  It  pictures  him 
vividly  and  dramatically.  Its  heaven  and  hell,  its 
ingenious  schemes  of  fall,  atonement,  and  final  judg- 
ment, hold  a  relation  to  certain  positive  but  ill-com- 
prehended experiences  of  human  nature  which  ena- 
bles them  to  direct  the  inmost  hopes  and  fears. 
Its  symbols  are  realized  more  intensely  than  any  ob- 
ject of  the  senses.  Its  jealous  God  sits  outside  the 
universe,  watching  to  punish  too  favorable  regards 
on  the  present  life,  and  the  neglect  of  his  holy  times, 
forms,  and  written  word ;  waiting  his  hour  to  dash 
the  world  into  nothingness,  and  man  into  judgment- 


THE   SEARCH  FOR   GOD.  367 

fires ;  a  God  of  arbitrary  will,  not  willing  according 
to  eternal  right,  but  calling  that  right  which  he 
chooses  to  will ;  all  wrath  to-day,  all  mercy  to-mor- 
row ;  suspending  laws,  thrusting  in  miracle  to  mend 
his  want  of  perception  of  human  needs  in  making  the 
laws  ;  changed  in  mood  by  human  conduct,  like  a 
child  ;  avenging  himself  on  insults,  like  an  undisci- 
plined man.  It  makes  him  altogether  finite  ;  assigns 
him  a  special  abode,  the  Church  ;  a  special  form,  the 
Christ ;  limits  his  earthly  appearance  to  one  spot  and 
one  age ;  makes  him  plot  and  reason  and  repent,  not 
by  way  of  ''  poetic  symbol,"  but  in  real  earnest,  like 
any  fallible  creature.  All  this  is  wrought  up  by 
poets,  apocalyptists,  theologians,  with  startling  im- 
agery, with  brilliant  and  terrible  coloring.  Men  of 
genius,  like  the  authors  of  the  Books  of  Daniel  and 
the  Revelation,  like  Augustine,  Dante,  Milton,  have 
been  busy  with  it ;  and  it  has  tremendous  hold. 
Blood  has  flowed  in  rivers  at  its  bidding.  Men  die 
with  their  eyes  riveted  on  its  promises  and  terrors.  It 
built  cathedrals  ;  it  created  inquisitions ;  it  has  swayed 
empires  and  ages ;  and  it  lives  yet,  a  power  in  the 
faith  of  the  civilized  world.  But  it  knows  not  eter- 
nal justice,  nor  wisdom,  nor  essential  truth,  beauty, 
nor  love  ;  not  as  principles,  not  as  realities.  This  is 
not  God.  The  infinite,  serene,  perfect  One  can  no 
more  be  seen  there  than  the  sky  can  be  seen  through 
the  smoke  of  burning  woods.  It  is  the  shadow  cast 
by  superstitious  fancy,  under  much  enforcement  from 
blind  fear  and  self-contempt.  All  the  texts  and 
miracles,  all  the  names  and  ofiices  of  the  Christ,  all 
the  prayers  and  poems  and  structures  of  art  or  creed, 
that  the  church  brings  to  the  support  of  its  genuine- 
ness, if  multiplied  by  ten  thousand,  would  not  make 


368  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

me  believe  that  a  true  picture  of   God.      Morality- 
rejects  it,  principles  judge  and  condemn  it. 

Then,  to  mount  into  another  and  nobler  sphere, 
there  is  the  speculative  intellect,  intuitive  it  may  be, 
believing,  sublime.  Yet,  as  speculative,  it  only  ap- 
prehends, not  necessarily  receives,  nor  becomes,  truth 
and  good.  And  how  all  apprehension  must  fall  short! 
How  much  more  of  Deity  there  is  which  the  best 
seeing  does  not  see  than  what  it  does  see  !  The  less 
circle  does  not  contain  the  greater.  If  we  could  take 
God  into  the  eye,  then  were  it  greater  than  God. 

"  Thought  is  lost,  ere  thought  can  soar  so  high, 
Even  like  past  moments  in  eternity." 

But  this  is  not  the  whole  truth.  Never  can  it  be 
without  some  sense  of  the  realities  of  Being  itself  that 
we  reflect  on  the  laws  of  our  own  being.  This  "  intel- 
lectual flame  which  from  Thy  breathing  spirit  came  '* 
has  not  parted  from  its  source.  The  beam  is  not  cut 
off  from  the  light  that  is  its  essence.  One  in  sub- 
stance with  eternal  truth,  we  must  have  intuition  or 
direct  sight  of  the  Eternal.  The  intellect  can  find 
immutable  law  and  everlasting  order.  When  the 
mind  studies  its  own  constant  and  universal  processes, 
the  forms  of  conception  and  intuition  which  make 
language  and  communion  possible,  its  spontaneities 
of  belief,  that  go  behind  the  lines  of  causation,  and 
prove  its  substantial  identity  herein  with  the  primal, 
original,  and  uncaused,  and  that  instinctive  faith  in 
such  organic  elements,  wherein  its  certitude  must  rest, 
—  when  it  studies  these  reverently  and  purely,  it 
reads  God's  manifested  word.  Here  is  not  the  ques- 
tion whether  it  can  penetrate  to  that  knowledge  of 
the  essential  nature  of  Deity,  which  can  come  only 


THE   SEAECH   FOR   GOD.  869 

in  the  knowledge  of  the  essential  nature  of  spiritual 
beincr  itself.  It  can  at  least  recosrnize  the  divine 
in  the  immutable  relations  of  thought  and  existence. 
It  can  know  truths  it  cannot  fathom  nor  define.  It 
can  expand  with  the  grandeur  of  these  laws  of  mind  ; 
can  be  prompted  to  noble  conduct  by  the  very  mys- 
tery that  proves  the  presence  within  them  of  a  gi*eater, 
wiser,  holier  reality  than  has  ever  yet  been  revealed 
in  personal  act. 

I  look  to  see  the  day  —  for  this  age  points  clearly 
thitherward,  and  is  busy  in  realizing  the  promise 
even  now — when  the  industrial  millions  shall  come 
at  some  form  of  serious  communion  with  great  specu- 
lative intellects,  which  have  really  contemplated  the 
serene  countenance  of  immutable  truth ;  which  have 
dwelt  in  its  sovereignty,  its  benignity,  its  beauty, 
its  moral  and  spiritual  laws  that  transcendently  pos- 
sess and  guide  our  inmost  being,  and  make  the  dig- 
nity and  reality  of  our  life  ;  when  the  clearer  insight 
and  recocmition  of  these  laws,  that  came  in  such  vari- 
ous  form  to  the  open  eyes  of  Plato  and  Spinoza  and 
Wordsworth,  of  Kant  and  Fichte  and  Goethe  and 
Emerson,  and  that  of  all  those  who  have  brought 
messages  from  the  central  sphere  where  poetry,  phi- 
losophy, ethics,  and  faith  are  known  as  one,  shall  be 
domestic  and  dear  —  I  would  say  biblical,  if  we  can 
make  the  word  mean  pure  help  without  despotism  — 
to  the  American  mind.  For  the  speculative  intellect 
has  its  democratic  mission,  in  the  proper  sense  of 
that  term,  which  must  endear  it  in  due  time  to  the 
practical  common  sense  of  men,  as  unfolding  the 
foundations  on  which  this  stands  fast,  and  wherein 
it  finds  relation  to  the  infinite  and  eternal,  and  so 
to  integral  spiritual  growth.     It  reveals  the  basis  of 

24 


370  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

certainty  on  which  repose  our  beliefs  in  God,  in  im- 
mortality, in  duty,  in  natural  spontaneous  tendency 
to  the  best,  —  the  real  fountain,  universal  and  human- 
divine,  of  all  that  has  been  wisely  trusted  in  the  posi^ 
tive  religions  of  mankind,  and  all  that  deserves  cre- 
dence in  their  teachers,  as  distinguished  from  the 
superficial,  external  authority  of  traditional  officiali- 
ties and  creeds.  And  so  it  should  fill  the  soul  with  a 
sacred  self-respect,  such  as  comports  with  these  inher- 
ent original  relations  to  truth  and  right,  this  immanent 
primacy,  authority,  guidance,  guarantee,  inspiration. 

Again  we  must  recur  to  the  one  condition  on 
which  the  intellect  also,  in  the  real  sense,  "  finds 
God."  This  seeing  is  in  being  only;  in  the  pro- 
found moral  purpose  ;  in  the  recognition  of  liberty 
through  the  laws  of  noble  discipline  and  renuncia- 
tion ;  in  prayer,  indeed,  but  prayer  in  its  one  only 
meaning,  —  the  spontaneous  upward  trend  of  en- 
deavor to  know  and  accept,  not  to  change,  the 
eternal  benignities  of  essential  order  ;  in  the  stress 
of  desire  for  truth,  which  holds  all  that  is  not  real  to 
be  really  nothing,  and  parts  with  surface  for  sub- 
stance at  any  cost ;  in  the  will  that  appropriates  be- 
lief into  conduct  with  joy  and  power. 

To  see  and  to  be  are  one.  We  know  God  by  par- 
ticipation, not  by  observation.  He  who  is  absorbed 
into  a  truth,  an  idea,  a  principle,  to  whom  it  is  life 
of  his  life  and  flesh  of  his  flesh,  he  it  is  that  knows 
it.  The  passing  of  subject  into  object,  what  hero 
and  idealist  and  enthusiast  and  lover  teach  us,  is  the 
divine  form  of  wisdom.  He  depreciates  the  function 
of  intellect  who  imagines  that  it  finds  content  in 
reasoning  about  the  Infinite.  We  know  truth  when 
we  live  by  the  unfailing  light  and  love  that  is  in  it ; 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD.  371 

not  looking  at  it  as  at  far-off  stars  in  the  sk}^  but 
finding  it  the  substance  of  our  path  and  opportunity^ 
We  know  God  when  life,  as  life,  seems  to  us  divine, 
inestimably  rich  in  its  uses  and  its  aims.  It  is  the 
same  experience  by  which,  and  by  which  only,  we 
know  ourselves  immortal.  The  sense  of  the  ever- 
lasting and  the  sense  of  the  divine  come  in  together 
in  the  heartfelt  appreciation  of  life,  as  faculty,  as 
promise,  as  sphere. 

Always  we  find  God,  and  whatever  great  beliefs 
mean  God  to  us,  in  finding  ourselves  ;  we  find  the 
One  not  looming  vast  on  far  horizons,  but  already  at 
home  in  us,  making  the  home  fair  and  sweet,  invest- 
ing it  with  native  grandeur  and  with  solemn  guar- 
antees, even  in  the  mysteries  of  moral  and  physical 
evil,  of  the  inseparableness,  the  identity,  rather,  of  all 
interests,  human  and  divine. 

And  now  we  turn  once  more  to  the  theological 
negations.  It  is  the  ungodliness  of  the  traditional 
theology  of  Ch\'istendom  that  in  so  many  ways  it 
makes  positive  and  essential  separation  between  God 
and  man.  Starting  from  this  point,  it  was  enforced 
to  study  Deity  with  a  sense  of  remoteness  far  greater 
than  that  with  which  one  would  study  a  geological 
specimen,  and  with  fears  and  doubts  akin  to  those 
with  which  one  would  venture  to  espy  through  a 
telescope  some  blazing  meteor  threatening  the  earth. 
Calvin  turns  colder  than  ice  in  the  process  of  defin- 
ing God's  relation  to  man  as  the  antagonism  of  his 
demands  to  our  desires.  To  assume  this  radical  ex- 
ternality of  truth  and  good  to  beings  who  must  pos- 
sess both  in  order  to  the  possibility  of  thinking  about 
them  at  all  is  to  shut  the  door  in  the  face  of  both. 

Christian  theology  could  never  bridge  over  that 


i>r2  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

dreadful  chasm  it  assumed  to  exist,  —  man  this  side, 
God  that  side.  Nothing  can  bridge  it,  and  the 
atoning  Christ  is  swallowed  up  in  it  as  a  feather  in 
Niagara.  God  going  out  of  man  ends  man,  ends 
God  also.  For  what  would  infinite  love  be,  so 
drained  of  its  natural  object  ?  Infinite  selfishness  is 
not  God.  What  is  left  for  the  bridge  to  start  from, 
and  what  should  it  lead  over  to  ?  But  what  if  God 
be  here  already,  in  the  nature  itself  that  hopes,  re- 
members, loves  ;  that  even  grows  by  the  inevitable 
lessons  of  folly,  weakness,  vices,  crimes  ?  By  what 
mysterious,  unfathomable  energy  do  we  live  and 
move?  The  ever-flowing  tides  that  sweep  through 
human  life,  calm  or  terrible,  as  character  shall  make 
them,  the  mysteries  of  good  or  evil,  —  what  but 
these  are  the  deeps  man  watches  and  explores,  till 
he  finds  within  them  that  transcendent  purpose  and 
eternal  love  which  he  inwardly  means  by  the  word 
*^God"? 

A  theology  that  cuts  God  off  from  man  and  then 
tries  to  bring  him  back  is,  so  far,  a  nightmare  dream, 
where  you  agonize  for  life,  and  yet  cannot  move  a 
limb.  How  it  grew  up,  partly  out  of  the  conscious- 
ness of  moral  evil,  in  the  old  transitional  time,  when 
the  world  was  in  terrified  reaction  from  trust  in  na- 
ture to  distrust  in  human  instincts  as  such,  and 
partly  out  of  the  logical  necessities  of  authoritative 
creed,  I  do  not  now  inquire.  But  I  note  that  what 
sustains  it  is  the  want  of  a  religious  appreciation  of 
man's  moral  nature  ;  the  failure  to  recognize  that 
religion  springs  within  us  by  force  of  afl&nity  with 
God,  instead  of  traveling  by  a  bridge  to  us  from 
abroad.  It  forgets  that  we  can  see  the  divine  only 
by  whatsoever  of  inherent  capacity  for  divineness  of 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD.  373 

thought  and  life  there  is  in  man,  and  by  moral  rec- 
ognition of  it  as  our  own  ideal :  that  *'  if  the  eye  be 
not  a  sun,  no  sun  for  it  can  ever  shine." 

What  strifes  and  miseries  have  come  of  these  ef- 
forts to  find  God  by  going  away  from  man !  What 
an  Inferno  for  centuries,  was  the  Church  that  pro- 
fessed to  have  found  him  by  this  method,  and  to 
have  his  truth  packed  in  formulas,  to  be  compre- 
hended best  by  him  who  should  most  thoroughly  ab- 
jure the  natural  and  human!  A  simpler  faith,  a 
nearer  track,  a  nobler  self-respect,  is  religion.  The 
love  we  feel,  the  truth  we  pursue,  the  honor  we  cher- 
ish, the  moral  beauty  we  revere,  blend  in  with  the 
eternity  of  the  principles  they  flow  from ;  and  then, 
glad  as  in  the  baptism  of  a  harvest  morning,  expand- 
ing towards  human  need  and  the  universal  life  of 
man,  our  souls  walk  free,  breathing  immortal  air. 
That  is  God, — not  an  object,  but  an  experience. 
Words  are  but  symbols  ;  they  do  not  define.  We 
say  '•  Him."  "  It "  were  as  well,  if  thereby  we 
mean  life,  wisdom,  love.  All  words  are  but  approx- 
imations ;  the  fact,  the  experience,  remains  the  same. 
When,  with  Greek  seer  and  Hebrew  saint,  you  call 
God  your  Father,  you  have  not  reached  a  clear  or 
perfect  expression  of  this  inmost  unit}'',  any  more 
than  when,  with  the  Teuton  mystic,  you  sing,  — 

"  God  is  a  mighty  sea,  unfathomed  and  unbound  ; 
Oh,  in  this  blessed  deep  may  all  my  soul  be  drowned,"  — 

or  affirm  with  the  Brahman  and  the  Sufi  that  one 
cannot  know  truth  without  becoming  truth  ;  that  so 
far  as  man  finds  God  he  enters  into  God.  All  these 
are  but  lispings  of  a  word  that  was  never  fully 
spoken,  of  a  sense  that  none  has  sounded.  Interpret 
wisely  ;  all  are  imperfect,  yet  all  are  true. 


374  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

The  far-off  God  of  the  creeds,  once  near  in  the 
earnestness  of  desire  and  need,  has  become  mainly  a 
God  of  speculation,  of  observation  through  the  mists 
of  ages.  What  the  framers  really  felt  of  deity  was 
precisely  what  they  could  not  put  into  form  and 
hand  over  to  churches.  What  really  shone  in 
them  is  known  only  by  the  light  that  shines  in  us. 
And  the  dead  were  dead  past  resurrection  but  for 
this.  But  this  new  life  the  best  saint  of  old  lives 
to-day,  is  but  resurrection.  The  fountain  of  life  is 
flowing  more  freshly  in  the  human  personality  that 
now  is.  It  is  instant  and  immediate  in  these  living 
powers;  and  we  want  no  veil  of  space,  or  time,  or 
officiality,  however  ancient  or  recognized,  between 
us  and  the  Spirit  that  conditions  and  completes  the 
best  will  and  faith  and  conduct,  —  a  deeper  heart 
within  those  destinies  of  life  that  cannot  be  shifted 
off,  nor  held  at  arms'  length  ;  our  real  being,  nearer 
than  death,  and  resolving  it  into  constant  ground 
and  condition  of  higher  life. 

From  religion  in  this  sense  neither  science  nor 
faith  can  secede.  What  the  age  rejects  is  a  God 
that  can  be  confined  and  laid  up  in  a  book ;  bandied 
about  in  barbarous  formulas  ;  flippantly  sounded  and 
measured  and  manipulated  in  prayer-meeting  and 
revival ;  complacently  partaken  in  "  communion  " 
bread  and  wine ;  a  God  who  dwells  apart  by  himself 
for  a  season,  and  then  creates  the  world  at  a  fixed 
time ;  and  of  whom  it  may  be  held  a  great  thing  to 
•say  that  he  was  once  a  creator,  and  then  once  in  a 
redeemer,  and  will  be  once  again  in  the  final  en- 
thronement of  the  same  over  all  the  souls  of  men. 
One  cannot  wonder  that  there  have  been  those  who 
replied,  ''  If  this  be  your  God,  atheism  is  better." 


THE   SEARCH    FOR   GOD.  375 

Such  denial  is  probably  rooted  in  an  intense  convic- 
tion of  what  is  really  divine. 

But  still  further :  I  can  see  that  one  may  so  live 
in  the  divineness  of  principles  that  he  no  more  seeks 
them  in  any  outward  apprehension  than  the  eye 
looks  out  of  itself  to  find  the  power  of  vision.  They 
are  so  identified  with  all  the  activities  of  life  that 
he  cannot  isolate  their  truth  and  wisdom  and  good- 
ness in  a  definite  form  of  consciousness.  Such  an  one 
may  deny  that  he  finds  God  ;  but  his  denial  reaches 
only  to  an  external  and  purely  objective  form  of 
divinity ;  it  has  the  inward  reality  of  worship,  be- 
ing such  a  pure  and  full  possession  by  the  divine 
element  as  to  allow  no  sense  of  separation,  even  in 
the  experience  of  imperfection  and  ideals  unattained. 
We  shall  grant  him  an  atheist  only  as  regards  those 
current  theological  definitions  of  God  that  find  no 
inherent  divineness  in  principles,  and  make  religion 
and  morality  rest  on  ab-extra  legislation  and  monar- 
chical will. 

Nor  must  we  imagine  that  theistic  faith  involves 
of  necessity  the  constant  or  even  the  infrequent  use 
of  those  terms  by  which  theology  is  bound  to  express 
it.  Alexander  yon  Humboldt  was  surely  possessed, 
as  few  men  have  ever  been,  by  the  transcendent 
unity  —  involving  all  we  mean  by  order,  beauty, 
wisdom,  and  love,  and  passing  all  possibilities  of  ex- 
pression—  that  sways  the  whole  domain  of  physical 
laws.  This  was  the  all-absorbing  inspiration  of  a 
life-time  that,  with  unexampled  industry  and  pro- 
foundest  reverence  for  truth,  tracked  the  ages  and 
the  spaces  to  unfold  its  meaning,  yet  ever  exploring 
only  to  deepen  his  sense  of  the  unexplored.  So  pro- 
found a  recognition  of  the  Infinite,  through  its  vis- 


376  THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD. 

ible  symbols  in  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  could  well 
dispense  with  the  common  phraseology  of  worship. 
And  his  statement  that  creation,  in  the  sense  of  a 
beginning  in  time,  was  to  him  incredible  and  incom- 
prehensible, should  not  prove  him  to  have  dismissed 
religion,  but  to  have,  at  the  very  least,  cleared  for 
himself  the  way  to  its  profoundest  realities.  For 
one,  I  know  no  rational  theory  of  science  or  faith 
which  can  make  the  charge  or  the  claim  of  atheism 
pertinent  to  such  a  mind. 

In  one  word,  religion  nowise  consists  in  the  effort 
to  frame  an  image,  to  form  a  definite  conception  of 
God,  or  even  in  the  recognition  of  any  name.  To 
give  the  infinite  over  to  visible  form  is  to  lose  it. 
Yet  the  religious  sentiment  is  nowise  discouraged  nor 
repelled.  That  we  cannot  so  limit  infinity  does  not 
prove  our  limitation,  so  much  as  would  our  satisfac- 
tion with  our  own  attempts  to  do  so.  And  that, 
through  this  very  inability  to  be  content  with  a  lim- 
ited God,  we  cannot  escape  apprehending  what  we 
yet  cannot  confine  by  thought,  is  but  the  sign  of 
our  participation  in  the  infinite  life.  Infinite  will, 
infinite  love,  are  not  to  be  definitely  imaged  ;  yet 
by  the  laws  of  inward  apprehension,  they  are  in- 
volved in  the  fact  of  universal  good. 

If,  then,  we  cannot  see  the  eternal  substance  and 
life  of  the  universe,  it  is  not  because  Deity  is  too  far, 
but  because  it  is  too  near.  We  can  measure  a  statue 
or  a  star,  and  look  round  and  beyond  it ;  but  the 
Life,  Light,  Liberty,  Love,  Peace,  whereby  we  live 
and  know,  and  are  helpful  and  calm  and  free,  which 
measures  and  surrounds  and  even  animates  us^  is 
itself  the  very  mystery  of  our  being,  and  known  only 
as  felt  and  lived.     God  stands  in  all  ideal  thought. 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   GOD.  3T7 

conviction,  aim,  whicli  ever  reach  into  the  infinite  ; 
and  thence,  as  if  an  angel  should  stand  in  the  sun, 
come  attractions  that  draw  forth  the  divine  capa- 
bilities within  us,  as  the  sun  the  life  and  beauty  of 
the  earth.  God  is  the  inmost  motive,  the  common 
path,  the  infinite  import,  of  all  work  we  respect, 
honor,  purely  rejoice  in,  and  fulfill ;  of  art,  science, 
trade,  philosophy,  intercourse,  —  whatsoever  function 
befits  the  soul  and  the  day.  Not  the  worker  for  the 
work's  sake  is  dear  to  Him,  but  the  work  for  the  spirit 
of  the  doer.  The  healthfulest,  noblest  uses  of  body 
and  soul  are  God,  found  and  known.  Found,  when 
one  who  seemed  weak  learns  that  he  is  strong  in 
these  uses  beyond  his  hope ;  when  a  dark,  inexpli- 
cable lot  comes  clear  by  courage  and  faith  ;  when 
experience  has  earned  what  had  been  praised  and 
perhaps  claimed  before.  Known,  when  names  and 
opinions  and  traditions  about  God  fade  before  the 
principles  of  conduct  into  which  belief  is  trans- 
formed ;  when  they  who  are  led  by  that  spirit  are 
sure  that  life  and  nature  and  destiny  mean  only  their 
good. 


FATE. 


"For  this  cause  came  I  unto  this  hour."  —  John  xii.  27. 

Man,  who  has  wound  his  iron  wires  about  the  globe, 
knows  none  the  less  that  there  are  coiled  around 
himself  the  bonds  of  a  sovereign  necessity.  Philoso- 
phize as  he  may  about  the  freedom  of  the  will,  there 
is  a  sense  in  which  he  knows  what  destiny  means. 
Here  the  immortal,  the  king  of  nature,  he  for  whom 
the  sun  shines,  the  earth  rolls,  and  her  ages  of  devel- 
opment were  but  preparations,  finds  himself  but  an 
atom,  but  dust  against  the  wind.  He  is  quick  to 
feel  his  bondage,  and  fatal  has  come  everywhere  to 
mean  inevitable,  deadly.  But  there  are  necessary 
pleasures  as  well  as  necessary  pains.  All  our  grandest 
possessions  are  necessary.  Immortality  we  cannot 
put  off.  The  moral  and  physical  laws  will  not  let 
us  sin  nor  wrong  our  souls  witliout  saving  penalties. 
Nature  is  our  friend,  whether  we  will  or  not.  We 
are  apt,  however,  to  give  prominence  and  emphasis 
to  the  fact  of  necessity  in  pain  above  that  of  it  in 
pleasure,  and  especially  in  the  nobler  pleasures  that 
pain  enforces.  And  this  is  because  the  necessity  of 
pain  is  a  thing  we  consciously  oppose  or  avoid,  while 
we  more  or  less  unconsciously  enjoy  the  happiness 
that  falls  to  us,  'without  inquiring  whether  it  be 
avoidable  or  not.     Thus  necessity  has  acquired  the 


FATE.  379 

name  of  fate,  a  word  by  which  we  convey  the  sense 
of  somewhat  opposed  to  us,  forced  on  us  against  our 
will. 

We  speak  of  fate  as  cruel,  implacable,  inexorable, 
seldom  applying  to  it  the  name  of  friendly  or  dear. 
It  stands  for  somewhat  terrible,  without  heart,  or 
will,  or  even  personality ;  something  behind  God, 
and  beyond  his  benignity  to  control ;  a  resistless 
iron  wheel  grinding  us  to  dust ;  a  gigantic  steel  hand 
grasping  and  snatching  away  our  hopes.  Now,  if  we 
had  noticed  that  there  is  an  equal  necessity  in  things 
which  bless  as  in  things  which  disappoint  us,  would 
this  be  so?  To  see  both  sides  of  necessity  is  there- 
fore the  first  step  towai'd  rightly  knowing  what  it 
means.  But  whatever  we  may  think  of  it,  the  belief 
in  it  is  inevitable.  It  is  universal,  and  the  nobler 
form  that  finds  freedom  in  it  crops  out  more  or  less 
in  all  religions.  All  nations  have  recognized  a  des- 
tiny, a  nature  of  things,  a  resistless  motion  beyond 
and  above  all  individual  purpose,  either  behind  Deity 
or  identical  with  it.  You  find  it  in  the  far  East, 
making  quietists  and  ascetics,  —  an  overwhelming 
despotism  of  abstractions  or  of  physical  nature,  yet 
believed  in  as  good  for  the  soul.  You  find  it  among 
the  Greeks,  in  the  fable  of  Prometheus  bound  to  his 
rock  and  torn  by  the  vulture,  for  bringing  down  fire 
to  men  from  a  jealous  Heaven,  calmly  assured  that 
Jove,  who  had  so  punished  him,  could  not  escape  his 
doom  ;  and  saying  to  those  who  warned  him  of  the 
temerity  of  his  denunciations,  "  What  should  I  fear, 
who  am  not  destined  to  die  ?  "  You  find  it  also  in 
that  grand  conception  of  the  irresistibleness  of  moral 
penalties,  of  which  the  whole  mythology  of  ancient 
Greece  is  full.     The  old  Greeks  had  a  faith,  as  per- 


380  FATE. 

feet  as  the  world  ever  saw,  in  absolute  justice  deal- 
ing its  inevitable  atonements,  and  fated  to  triumph 
over  all  iniquity.  You  find  it  made  into  inspiration 
in  the  Mohammedan  religion.  You  find  it  in  the 
North  American  Indians'  going  back  to  their  early 
legends,  to  find  foretold  and  foreordained  there  the 
destruction  they  saw  impending.  You  find  it  among 
the  Scandinavian  tribes  in  the  belief  that  every  one's 
destiny  was  written  in  his  brain  at  birth.  You  find 
it  in  the  philosophical  conception  of  Deity,  which 
makes  necessity  in  some  sort  a  primal  condition  of 
perfection.  Goodness,  wisdom,  justice,  law,  and  love 
are  the  fate  of  Godhead;  not  a  fate  imposed  frorn 
without,  but  the  fate  which  consists  in  the  essential 
michangeableness  of  a  perfect  nature. 

Then,  you  find  fate  suggested  to  impressible  mul- 
titudes by  the  success  of  one  leader,  by  the  reverses 
and  failures  of  another.  '^  The  charmed  life,"  "  the 
lucky  star,"  "the  evil  genius,"  are  but  synonyms  of 
the  popular  notion  of  personal  destiny.  It  is  sug- 
gested in  that  prophetic  intuition  which  belongs  to 
devotion  and  skill  in  every  sphere  and  kind,  —  to  a 
man  in  his  true  place ;  all  things  serving  his  pur- 
pose ;  all  other  men  making  way  for  him ;  the  logic 
of  events  bringing  him  up  again  and  again,  till  some 
great  purpose  —  the  pith  of  the  whole  struggle  — 
comes  to  pass  through  him,  whom  nobody  can  put 
down,  and  whom  it  is  vain  to  try  to  do  without. 

You  see  the  belief  in  destiny  slowly  darkening 
over  some  ever-thwarted  soul,  and  mounting  like  the 
dawn',  in  growing  confidence  and  pride,  in  some  ever- 
fortunate  one.  Everywhere  it  lies  in  wait  on  the 
verge  of  perception,  needing  but  a  few  slight  coin- 
cidences or  intimations  of  real  tendency  to  appear 


FATE.  381 

and  give  order  and  purpose  to  the  course  of  events. 
It  is  often  vaguely  enough  conceived,  often  falsely, 
after  such  wise  as  to  dishearten  where  there  is  most 
need  of  energy  and  hope ;  but  so  universal,  so  nat- 
ural to  the  joys  and  griefs,  the  hopes  and  fears,  of 
life  that  it  plainly  indicates  some  grand  law  which 
it  is  well  for  us  to  understand. 

Then,  further,  we  are  all  conscious  that  our  doings 
have  unexpected  issues,  and  react  upon  us  without 
visible  human  will,  as  the  Eastern  proverb  says  ;  — 

"  This  world  is  like  a  valley,  and  our  actions  are  like  shouts, 
And  the  echo  of  the  shouts  reverberates  on  ourselves." 

The  unmeaning  word,  the  unconscious  act,  goes 
forth  from  us  on  a  mission  which  cannot  be  calculated. 
And  this,  too,  fascinates  the  mind  as  with  the  pre- 
sentiment of  something  essentially  for  its  good.  How 
often  it  is  plainly  so !  The  book  or  friend  came  at 
the  moment  they  were  needed.  A  trifle  thwarted 
your  plan,  and  saved  you  from  some  great  evil ;  and 
when  you  traced  back  the  angel  of  mercy  or  warn- 
ing, you  found  a  wondrous  convergence  of  events  was 
necessary  to  it,  whose  import  no  one  had  fathomed. 
However  sure  we  may  be  that  the  vulgar  doctrine  of 
special  providences  is  wholly  inconsistent  with  the 
belief  in  a  perfect  God,  there  is  connected  with  these 
presentiments  and  personal  guardianships  the  idea 
of  a  friendly  destiny.  An  overruling  guidance  looks 
out  of  all  plans  and  all  experience  upon  the  soul 
which  lives  cordially  and  intimately  with  the  eternal 
laws,  and  does  not  fear  to  use  the  word  "fate"  in 
wonder  and  worship. 

Again,  so  are  we  impelled  to  this  belief  that  the 
intensest  consciousness  of  moral  freedom  and  respon- 


382  FATE. 

sibility  cannot  do  it  away.  At  the  peril  of  para- 
doxes, we  all  keep  it  in  sonae  form  or  other.  There 
is  nothing  to  which  we  cling  with  more  tenacity  than 
to  our  moral  freedom,  and  justly;  but  just  as  firmly 
do  we  cling  to  the  belief  in  an  irreversible  and  su- 
preme law,  —  in  an  all- wise  Providence  bringing 
highest  ends  from  all  beginnings.  They  who  would 
antagonize  these,  who  would  cleave  to  one  and  deny 
the  other,  outrage  consciousness,  dismiss  common 
sense,  and  assume  the  half  to  be  the  whole.  The 
principle  by  which  this  fate  and  this  freedom  are 
harmonized  may  be  too  delicate  for  our  gross  under- 
standings to  detect,  like  a  balance  hung  in  the  heav- 
ens, whereof  we  see  the  scales  and  the  fine  fibres 
stretching  up  into  the  invisible,  but  behold  not  the 
beam  nor  its  support.  What  then  follows  ? 
Doubt?     No;  but 

"  While  knowledge  grows  from  more  to  more, 
Let  more  of  reverence  in  us  dwell." 

It  is  impossible  for  a  thoughtful  person  to  ignore 
the  practical  limits  to  the  freedom  of  the  will.  There 
is  the  past,  which  we  cannot  recall,  nor  prevent  it 
from  making  the  future  other  than  it  would  be,  were 
a  single  motive  or  act  changed.  The  future  is  now 
continually  bringing  on  things  plainly  unavoidable 
by  the  power  of  man.  Character  is  made  in  large 
measure  for  men  rather  than  by  them.  Who  can 
ignore  heredity  ?  Those  low  foreheads,  flat  crowns, 
bulging  occiputs,  the  marks  of  brutal  origin ;  those 
sensual  instincts  fed  from  the  mother's  breast ;  those 
moral  idiocies  and  perversities  which  flow  in  the 
blood,  and  turn  good  to  evil  and  take  evil  for  good, 
—  we  are  coming  to  regard  it  as  barbarous  for  penal 


FATE.  383 

laws  to  ignore.  The  moral  sentiment  of  the  age  rec- 
ognizes every  day  more  and  more  that  the  wretches 
it  sends  to  the  prison  and  the  gallows  did  not  make 
their  own  characters.  Then  the  noble  qualities  de- 
scend in  like  manner,  and  insure  from  birth  onwards 
a  smoother  and  higher  destiny,  in  happy  accord  with 
life's  best  opportunities. 

Temperament,  society,  education,  institutions,  what 
fates  they  are !  The  strong  react  upon  them  ;  the 
weak  yield  passively  to  them;  but  no  man  can  ever 
quite  cast  off  his  past ;  his  present  life  is  rooted  in 
it  and  largely  determined  by  it.  And  yet  when,  in 
view  of  all  this,  you  swing  over  to  the  belief  that 
virtue  and  vice  are  but  different  names  for  necessity, 
and  that  men  are  in  nowise  responsible  for  their 
characters,  the  tremendous  fact  of  conscience  meets 
you  with  its  penalties  and  rewards,  —  the  moral 
sense,  never  extinct,  however  perverted;  the  con- 
sciousness of  power  to  choose  between  right  and 
wrong,  of  a  spontaneous  will  behind  all  motives. 
And  if  you  follow  out  the  belief  that  there  is  no 
moral  freedom  to  its  legitimate  result,  —  namely, 
that  evil  is  something  organic  and  unavoidable^  — 
you  are  met  by  a  great  voice  out  of  your  inmost 
soul,  which  says.  Thou  shalt  never  acquiesce  in 
wrong ;  though  it  have  taken  God's  name  and  bowed 
the  world  to  worship,  it  is  never  to  be  acquiesced 
in  as  a  necessity,  but  to  be  denounced  and  fought 
against  as  a  crime.  This  the  purity  and  sanity  of 
your  soul  demand. 

There  is  no  criminal  propensity  that  will  not,  as 
long  as  it  may,  take  shelter  under  the  pretense  of 
fate,  claim  to  be  organic  and  ineradicable  ;  but  we 
know  that  the  moral  nature  is  not  its  slave.     It  is 


384  FATE. 

in  some  sense  free,  and  will  feel  the  need  of  root- 
ing out  that  propensity,  cost  what  it  may.  The 
slave  of  the  old  Stoic  Zeno,  knowing  his  master's 
belief  in  fate,  complained  to  him  while  he  was  apply- 
ing the  lash  for  his  thieving,  ''  I  am  fated  to  steal; " 
''And  to  be  scourged,"  replied  the  philosopher. 

Nor  will  it  do  to  attribute  the  suffering  we  see  in 
this  world  to  inevitable  forces,  to  Divine  wrath,  to 
social  necessities  over  which,  having  no  control,  we 
need  feel  no  responsibility  for  their  fruits.  God  did 
not  make  men  to  suffer,  but  to  be  blest.  Poverty, 
war,  slavery,  pestilence,  are  not  his  ordinances ;  they 
are  in  large  degree  consequences  of  the  violation  of 
stern  but  beneficial  laws,  of  human  abuses  and  neg- 
lect which  are  voluntary. 

The  freedom  we  here  affirm  is  proved,  as  you  see, 
by  moral  accountability,  whose  retributions  are  a 
sort  of  higher  fate.  And  that  power  of  choice,  that 
spontaneous  energy  of  the  will,  that  honorable  pride 
in  self-discipline  and  the  working  out  our  own  des- 
tiny, in  making  ourselves  true  men  and  women,  which 
we  ought  to  cherish  as  something  dearer  than  life, 
must  not  be  conceived  under  conditions  that  exclude 
this  higher  fate.  So,  then,  here  are  the  opposite 
scales  of  fate  and  freedom.  They  may  hang  from  an 
invisible  support  and  point  of  juncture,  but  neither 
must  be  ignored.  It  may  not  be  so  hard  to  reconcile 
them  if  we  take  large  views  of  fate  and  freedom. 
What,  indeed,  is  fate?  Not  the  predetermination 
of  individual  actions ;  these  flow  in  part  from  the 
spontaneity  of  the  will;  but  the  necessity  of  final 
good,  and  of  the  best  possible  process  thereto.  If 
good  and  God  are  one,  then  the  whole  universe 
must  tend  steadily  through  such  processes  as  finite 


FATE.  385 

growth  conditions,  toward  obedience  to  good,  toward 
harmony  with  its  benignant  hxvvs.  You  could  not 
worship  otherwise.  Yet  you  must  worship ;  find  a 
higher  than  your  imperfect  will,  —  something  higher 
than  the  mere  laws  of  science,  which  represent  our 
ignorance  as  well  as  our  knowledoje  of  nature.  And 
a  God  whose  wisdom  is  insufficient  to  round-in  his 
world  and  his  creatures  and  save  them,  whose  will 
does  not  dwell  as  the  ultimate  force  in  finite  wills  to 
move  them  to  the  best  results,  is  not  adorable.  If 
one  soul  could  be  lost,  could  stand  out  against  Him, 
through  all  the  penalties  of  his  staunch  laws  forever, 
then  that  soul  is  a  God  as  well  as  he ;  there  are  two 
Gods,  or  one  God  and  a  rebel  whom  he  cannot  con- 
vert. There  is  no  refuge  from  the  absurdity  but  in 
the  noble  doctrine  of  fate  :  *•'  All  things  shall  be  put 
under  God's  feet,  and  the  last  enemy  that  shall  be 
subdued  is  sin."  And  how  is  sin  to  be  subdued  but 
by  making  all  men  righteous  ?  "  Thou  sparest  all, 
for  they  are  thine,  O  thou  lover  of  souls !  "  This 
kind  of  destiny  we  cannot  deny  nor  object  to.  There 
can  be  no  freedom  from  this. 

The  Calvinist  dogma  of  election  goes  upon  the 
foreordaining  poiuer  of  omniscience  and  omnipo- 
tence. It  does  not  go  far  enough.  That  power  to 
be  real  must  not  save  some  and  destroy  others ;  it 
must  affirm  its  sovereignty  in  all;  and  that  sover- 
eignty is  salvation,  because  it  is  the  reconciliation 
of  the  human  will  with  the  Divine. 

Nor  can  there  be  any  freedom  from  the  laws  of 
our  own  being.  We  are  free  only  within  the  bounds 
of  our  nature,  and  only  in  the  rightful  use  of  it.  To 
disobey  that  is  to  be  enslaved.  He  whose  passions 
stunt  and  cripple  him,  bend  his  forehead  to  the  earth 

25 


386  FATE. 

and  tread  his  conscience  under  their  heels,  is  enslaved. 
Every  man  is  a  slave  who  has  not  the  freedom  to  do 
as  in  his  noblest  moments  he  would  do.  Does  not 
every  selfish  caprice  stand  under  the  overhanging 
sword  of  a  moral  penalty  ?  There  is  no  freedom  but 
in  the  glad  acceptance  of  those  sacred  moral  bonds 
in  which  our  health  lies  secured,  and  in  loyal  obe- 
dience to   them, —  ''''the  liberty  of  the  children  of 

aodr 

The  will  is  free  only  when  it  is  not  prevented 
from  obedience ;  when  neither  fear  nor  hope,  open 
vice  nor  secret  snare,  wanton  desire  nor  outward 
pressure  of  the  world  he  lives  in,  can  keep  the  man 
from  the  grand  track  wherein  his  glory  and  his  glad- 
ness dwell,  —  where  God  bade  him  walk  with  girded 
loins  and  hand  and  heart  all  free  for  natural  service, 
his  face  glowing  with  fore-gleams  of  that  immortal 
life  toward  which  it  is  turned.  To  be  right  with 
your  own  conscience,  with  the  universe,  with  the 
eternal  paths  of  rectitude,  —  that  is  liberty.  That 
finds  no  constraint ;  it  accepts  what  must  be  as  that 
which  is  best  to  be.  It  lays  its  hand  trustingly  in 
the  hand  of  fate,  and  lo,  it  is  no  longer  fate,  but  free- 
dom. So  far  from  freedom  being  incompatible,  then, 
with  that  Divine  ordination  of  all  to  good,  that  sov- 
ereignty over  the  issues  of  life  which  we  have  called 
fate,  it  is  absolutely  dependent  thereon.  Looked  at 
in  this  large  way,  they  are  not  inconsistent ;  they  are 
identical. 

Thus  every  retribution  is  but  the  repetition  of 
this  grand  lesson.  Human  nature  is  sound  and  sane. 
The  bands  that  surround  it  are  stronger  than  ada- 
mant, but  they  are  its  own  nerve  and  muscle  ;  they 
are  health ;  and  no  sin  nor  folly  can  frustrate  that 


FATE.  887 

which  is  the  secret  purpose  of  every  atom  and  every 
law.  So  then  we  find  that  there  are  attractive,  in- 
spiring aspects  of  fate. 

Let  us  but  comprehend  it  as  identified  with  the 
stability  of  the  moral  universe,  with  the  omnipotence 
of  good,  with  the  deliverance  of  the  soul  from  what 
soever  limits,  oppresses,  enslaves  it,  with  the  divine 
liberty  of  sons  of  God  ;  let  us  understand  it  as  guar- 
anteeing final  success  of  every  endeavor  after  a  pure 
and  noble  life ;  let  it  plant  the  heart's  confidence  in 
the  deeps  of  absolute  and  perfect  love;  think  of  it 
as  that  which  if  you  leave  out  of  your  conception  of 
Providence,  out  of  your  vision  of  the  future,  you  have 
no  longer  a  God,  you  have  no  longer  a  moral  order ; 
you  have  a  universe  of  wrangling  principles,  swept 
hither  and  thither  on  the  whirlwind  of  chance  ;  then 
you  will  say,  Blessed  be  fate,  and  fatal  will  mean 
dear  and  divine.  It  is  not  much  to  the  credit  of 
Christianity  that  Christians  generally  imagine  what 
they  call  fatalism  in  other  religions  to  be  necessarily 
a  discouraging,  demoralizing  doctrine.  The  old 
Hindu  proverb  says,  "  How  can  he  who  beholds  all 
things  in  God  ever  give  his  heart  to  sin  ?  " 

The  Buddhists  carried  their  fatalism  down  to  the 
minutest  actions  and  events,  yet  they  were  the  most 
energetic  and  devoted  proselyters  and  the  most  en- 
terprising and  active  colonizers  of  the  East.  Out 
of  the  dogma  that  everything  was  fixed  by  fate  they 
drew  the  duty  to  seek  the  present  good  and  final  re- 
lease of  all  mankind.  The  Mohammedans  fight  all 
the  more  bravely  for  believing  themselves  destined  to 
die  in  battle ;  and  the  Turks  are  said  to  have  been 
inspired  to  intense  enthusiasm,  in  the  wars  with 
Russia,  by  the  belief  that  they  were  destined  to  be 


388  FATE. 

driven  from  Europe.  Says  the  Arab  proverb,  '•  De- 
spair is  a  freeman."  It  is  when  the  stake  is  felt, 
when  the  fagot  is  hghted,  that  the  martyr's  fears 
perish  and  his  soul  is  fired  to  the  victory  over  death. 
He  beholds  a  higher,  blessed  fate  within  and  beyond 
the  outward,  of  which  this  is  the  servant.  There 
was  never  a  heroic  soul  that  offered  itself  to  death 
for  a  conviction,  down  to  John  Brown,  whose  sub- 
limest  words  did  not  gather  around  this  faith  in  fate. 
It  is  the  condition  of  moral  inspiration  to  hear  and 
follow  an  inevitable  command.  The  test  of  the 
greatness  of  a  cause  is  this,  —  Does  it  inspire  its 
leaders  with  the  sense  of  God  and  fate  ?  And  in 
more  common  paths,  the  triumph  of  human  character 
is  not  to  war  against  the  inevitable,  still  less  to  en- 
dure it  patiently  or  surrender  to  it  as  to  a  foe,  but  to 
accept  it  as  a  friend.  Death  is  not  conquered  till 
we  believe  it  is  a  natural  process,  inevitable  because 
needful  to  our  growth.  And  perhaps  only  when  it 
is  felt  to  be  inevitable  does  it  come  to  be  so  ac- 
cepted. It  is  not  piety  to  desire  miraculous  inter- 
.ference  to  ward  off  the  allotments  of  nature,  when 
they  threaten  our  happiness.  It  can  never  be  so 
good  for  any  one  to  believe  that  Lazarus  was  raised 
from  the  dead  as  to  accept  death  as  somewhat  in- 
dispensable, part  of  a  sacred  order  which  ought  not 
to  be  broken,  and  in  which  God  has  hidden  spirit- 
ual blessings.  It  is  not  piety  to  pray  for  special 
immunity  from  a  lot  which  is  otherwise  plainly  in- 
evitable, but  to  strive  to  accept  it,  and  find  its  justi- 
fication or  win  the  crown  it  proffers.  It  is  not  beau- 
tiful to  fight  bitterly  and  sullenly  against  necessary 
inconveniences,  repugnancies,  disadvantages,  but  most 
beautiful  to  accept  them  cordially,  and  from  all  out- 


FATE.  389 

ward  antagonism  and  defeat  to  win  inward  recon- 
ciliation and  triumph.  Is  it  not  common  experience 
that  we  never  know  how  much  we  can  do  or  bear  till 
brought  to  an  inevitable  test  ?  It  is  always  fate  that 
teaches  us  our  diviner  part.  The  feeble  woman  be- 
comes a  giant  in  strength  when  her  child  is  in  peril. 
Behold  the  Xation,  cold,  indifferent  to  liberty,  unused 
to  arms,  so  slow  to  believe  conspiracy  could  aim  at  its 
life,  —  one  rebel  gun  makes  it  certain.  It  rises  like  a 
whirlwind,  a  camp  of  a  million  men.  These  mystic 
souls  of  ours  are  sealed  to  ourselves.  There  is  no 
key  to  unlock  the  reserved  powers  fed  from  divine 
founts,  whence  we  can  never  be  cut  off,  but  the  de- 
mands of  fate.  They  can  make  the  tenderest  heart 
manly,  and  the  meekest  saint  do  sternest  work. 
They  can  break  the  thick  crust  that  covers  some  un- 
developed soul  from  whom  you  hoped  nothing,  and 
lo,  a  hero,  a  lover,  a  leader  of  men.  In  great  spheres 
or  in  small,  it  is  necessity  that  trains  and  matures 
us.  The  secret  of  success  is  not  good  fortune,  not 
friends,  not  gifts  ;  it  is  to  see  that  when  duty  com- 
mands we  "go  not,  like  the  quarry-slave  at  night, 
scourged  to  his  dungeon,"  but  know  when  to  turn 
fate  into  freedom. 

A  final  word  of  spiritual  application. 

The  paths  narrow  and  concentrate  into  one.  The 
word  comes  unmistakably,  *'  This  is  the  way,  walk 
thou  in  it,  for  there  is  no  other  possible."  Then 
with  what  fresh  certainty  we  baste  to  greet  the  des- 
tiny to  which  it  leads.  What  we  want  most  is  the 
conviction  of  a  clear  pointing  in  our  faculties  and  ex- 
perience ;  unmistakable  significance  in  one's  past  and 
present  ;  a  manifest  place  and  function  for  one  in 
the  great  work  of  life.     Whatsoever  emergency  thus 


390  FATE. 

points  us  to  our  destiny  teaches  us  what,  beyond  all 
things  else,  we  would  know.  And,  if  we  love  truth, 
we  shall  pray  to  know  it  as  our  highest  good,  though 
it  should  lead  us  through  fiery  trials.  Here  is  the 
beginning  of  the  end  of  sighing  for  broader  spheres 
or  brighter  talents  ;  of  useless  self-discouragements 
and  distrusts.  The  great  step  in  life  is  to  learn 
that  God  has  made  us  to  be  something  real^  and 
to  accept  the  commission,  and  say,  That  will  I  be 
through  joy  or  sorrow,  loved  or  rejected ;  and  then 
say.  The  world  shall  take  me  as  I  am ;  1  will  not  be 
ashamed  of  defects  of  nature,  of  misfortunes  I  cannot 
heal.  My  part  shall  be  done  freely,  self-respectingly, 
gladly,  whatever  it  may  be.  "  Then  the  worst  that 
can  come  cannot  cheat  me  of  that  for  which  I  am 
made  ;  the  best  that  can  come  shall  help  it."  Pride 
shall  go  down,  and  fear  shall  be  done  away,  and  vain 
illusions  and  childish  mortifications  and  lawless  de- 
sires shall  flee  before  such  reconciliations,  and  leave 
one  in  God's  peace.  "  When  He  giveth  quietness, 
who  then  can  make  trouble  ?  " 

To  know  that  we  are  working  with  the  perfect 
laws ;  to  mingle  our  wills  with  that  resistless  current 
which  bears  ceaseless  refreshment  to  all  creatures, 
and  sweeps  all  movement  on  to  fairest  ends  ;  so  to 
waste  no  effort  and  to  fear  no  failure,  to  let  no  in- 
evitable conflict  pass  by  till  it  has  removed  a  burden 
of  doubt  and  helped  to  make  the  sphere  beautiful 
and  rich,  and  the  spiritual  pulses  throb  with  all  the 
force  of  purposes  dear  to  God  —  this  is  the  matchless 
good  that  approaches  every  one  of  us  in  that  veiled 
presence  which  we  call  necessity. 


LIVING  BY  FAITH. 


What  word  has  suffered  such  abuse  as  "  faith  " ! 
How  theologians  bandy  it  about ;  fence  it  off  for  the 
elect ;  locate  it  away  in  Palestine,  around  a  man 
and  a  book ;  cover  it  in  mysteries  and  paradoxes 
from  the  common  heart,  sense,  life !  Yet  the  beau- 
tiful word,  because  it  does  not  mean  any  of  these 
things,  but  does  mean  all  that  is  simple,  hearty,  and 
homelike,  will  protest,  and  demand  to  be  justified ; 
will  be  made  a  syllable  of  the  universal  religion 
which  transcends  the  names  of  Jew,  Mohammedan, 
Christian,  infidel ;  made  to  mean  what  good  and  sim- 
ple men  and  women  can  feel  and  live  by,  —  and  that 
broad  and  universal  meaning  is  the  sense  of  being 
at  home  in  the  universe  and  in  its  currents  of  law, 
both  physical  and  spiritual ;  at  home  in  it  as  the 
true  human  sphere ;  at  home  in  life,  whether  this 
life  or  another. 

Let  us  see  in  what  sense  faith  is  really  the  force 
to  live  by. 

I.  We  live  by  faith  in  our  spiritual  opportunities. 
Every  relation  and  duty  is  as  the  folded  bud  of  an 
apple-tree  in  a  spring  morning ;  the  soul,  the  sun  that 
is  set  to  bring  it  to  blossom  and  fruit.  Nothing  less 
than  our  daily  bread  is  the  endeavor  to  meet  the  day 
with  love  and  cheer.     "All  things  are  fruit  to  me,  O 


392  LIVING   BY   FAITH. 

Nature,  which  thy  seasons  bring,"  said  Marcus  Au- 
relius,  pronouncing  a  manlier  and  more  devout  phi- 
losophy than  the  creeds  of  Christendom  have  taught. 

How  ofteu  the  first  act  of  the  encounter  with  one's 
difficulties  is  to  throw  away  the  hope  of  making  any- 
thing of  them !  But  a  prison  has  been  audience- 
room  of  the  stateliest  thought,  birth-chamber  of  im- 
mortal books  that  taught  men  the  way  to  be  glad 
and  free ;  the  four  walls  melted  before  the  white 
glory  of  celestial  hosts.  What  spiritual  invigora- 
tions  may  flow  from  failing  eyes  and  hands  on  a  sick- 
bed, through  the  noiseless  room  ! 

But  this  highest  and  best  in  opportunity  is  shy  ;  it 
will  not  force  itself  on  you.  It  falls  at  your  feet 
like  a  winged  flower-seed  on  a  dusty  path,  and  you 
must  be  looking  for  it  to  see  it.  The  spring  meadow, 
full  of  nestling  buttercups  and  violets,  has  every 
law  of  love  and  beauty  there  is  in  the  clusters  of 
white  and  blue  and  golden  stars  that  lie  far  off  in 
constellations  that  only  the  telescope  reveals.  What 
is  space  to  Him  who  is  the  spirit  of  joy  and  power  at 
every  point  of  being  ?  Shall  not  a  common  house- 
hold be  fragrant  with  his  unseen  lilies  and  roses,  if 
the  thrills  of  his  circling  spiritual  seasons  are  there? 
A  wise  man  was  he  who,  far  away  in  China,  more 
than  two  thousand  years  ago,  said  of  the  home,  the 
narrowest  sphere,  what  the  New  Testament  never 
said,  —  and  that  is  a  sad  lack  in  its  teachings,  —  that 
if  the  home  be  rightly  ordered  every  other  larger 
sphere  of  life  and  society  would  flow  into  right  order. 
God  comes  first  and  nearest  where  the  relations  are 
simplest.  Trying  to  organize  spiritual  influences  on 
a  large  scale  is  the  folly  of  the  sects.  The  Spirit  for- 
sakes him  who  doubts  its  grandeur  in  a  personal  and 
private  sphere. 


LIVING   BY   FAITH.  393 

It  is  an  evil  hour  when  one  begins  to  believe  that 
there  can  be  no  great  doing  with  small  means  ;  in- 
deed, that  there  is  any  such  thing  as  small  means  to 
a  great  heart  and  will. 

I  have  seen  persons  less  affected  by  the  glory  of  a 
great  sunset  in  the  Alps  than  some  other  gentle  soul 
was  in  watching  the  growth  of  a  few  window  plants 
and  protecting  them  from  too  much  sun.  Think 
how  Alvan  Clark  worked  for  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
grinding  away  in  his  Cambridge  workshop,  to  make 
lenses  so  delicate  as  to  secure  the  fine  balance  of  re- 
fractive power  which  gives  best  vision  with  largest 
magnifying  power,  and  so  at  last  brought  out  the  ob- 
ject-glass of  the  telescope  that  showed  Sirius  to  be 
two  revolving  stars  I  Ah,  you  have  to  bend  yourself 
to  fine  apprehensions,  to  delicate,  tender  touches,  if 
you  are  to  get  the  vision  that  shall  show  you  what 
unimagined  spiritual  movement  is  going  on  in  the 
souls  that  surround  you,  strewn  here  as  stars  are 
in  space. 

It  is  an  evil  hour  when  only  the  changes  that 
strike  the  hasty  eye  pass  for  great  work  accom- 
plished,—  the  tangible  profits  one  can  tell  over  to 
the  neighbor,  the  popular  clamor  that  can  be  raised 
for  the  new  movement,  the  list  of  names  of  dignita- 
ries and  respectabilities,  the  parade  of  garrulous  con- 
vention and  conferences.  It  is  power  to  appreciate 
what  does  not  so  tell,  that  w^e  want,  —  that  personal 
reality  of  character  which  cannot  be  set  forth  with 
popular  effect,  which  cannot  even  be  described  in 
any  human  language,  nor  made  known  but  in  the 
communications  of  a  noble  sympathy  or  fellowship  of 
experience.  It  is  power  to  appreciate  toil  of  heart 
and  will,  —  the  inward  self  disciplines,  "  the  fitting 


894  LIVING    BY    FAITH. 

of  self  to  its  sphere,"  the  repression  of  murmurs 
against  destiny,  or  passionate  demands  for  release 
from  hard  conditions,  the  lift  of  the  will  to  the 
height  of  unpraised,  unrecognized  sacrifice.  This  is 
perception,  this  is  wisdom ;  this,  faith  in  unseen  val- 
ues, in  measurement  by  quality,  not  by  quantity. 

The  faith  to  live  by  is,  that  the  whole  person, 
going  into  any  right  thought  or  work,  ennobles  it  be- 
yond power  of  circumstance  to  discredit  or  disparage. 
Greatness  is  not  in  materials,  but  in  the  user.  The 
genie  in  the  old  Eastern  tales  came  disguised  as  a 
beggar,  or  shut  in  a  little  box,  or  hid  in  a  kitchen 
lamp.  "  Opportunity  comes,"  said  the  old  proverb, 
*'  with  feet  of  wool,  treading  soft."  You  must  have 
the  instinct  of  an  artist  for  the  approaches  of  this 
good  genius.  You  must  listen  for  it  as  you  do  for 
the  finest  notes  of  Urso's  violin.  When  shall  the  ear 
of  the  assembly  be  so  intent  and  strained  to  catch  the 
fine,  withdrawn  tones  of  personal  character  to  which 
silence  is  the  path  ?  When,  in  this  roar  of  major- 
ities, shall  we  sit  in  the  opening  of  the  cave  of  the 
Spirit,  and  hear  the  "still,  small  voice"  within  our- 
selves ? 

A  certain  refinement  and  delicacy  of  the  moral 
sense,  of  the  affections  and  perceptions,  is  necessary. 
Coarse  modes  of  thinking  and  judging,  the  forward, 
off-hand  rule  of  prejudice  or  conceit  or  desire  of  ef- 
fect, are  what  blunt  the  appreciation  of  character  and 
make  social  wisdom  impossible.  Nature  constantly 
offers  us  the  chance  to  revise  our  judgments  of  men 
and  things,  and  form  nobler  and  more  fruitful  ones. 
Self  is  an  opaque  shadow  projected  on  the  forward 
path  to  blind  us. 

It  is  the  very  essence  of  a  mere  politician,  for  ex- 


LIVING  BY   FAITH.  395 

ample,  to  neglect  moral  opportunity.  It  goes  by  on 
its  feet  of  wool,  while  he  is  straining  every  nerve  to 
get  above  his  fellows.  Yet  only  he  who  has  learned 
to  stoop,  to  pick  up  the  little  and  lift  the  lowly,  can 
reap  the  ultimate  harvests  possible  for  public  men  in 
this  land  and  age.  So  in  private  life,  we  should  not 
be  mere  politicians,  but  remember  that  opportunity 
comes  so  low  down  on  the  earth,  among  the  things 
that  promise  no  show,  that  we  cannot  keep  our  ear 
too  close  to  the  ground  ;  that  we  need 

"  a  thoughtful  love. 
Through  constant  watching  wise." 

We  need  the  faith  that  there  is  no  increase  like  that 
of  the  noble  purpose,  rooted  in  secrecy  as  a  plant  in 
the  sod ;  we  need  faith  in  our  surroundings,  and  to 
keep  despair  of  them  at  arm's  length.  Are  we 
thinking  our  neighbor's  lot  is  happier  than  ours  ? 
What  do  we  know  of  it  ?  The  griefs  of  every  lot 
are  hid.  The  worst  impediments  to  one's  freedom  are 
often  the  very  things  his  neighbor  is  envying  him. 
Let  vague  complaints  give  way  to  that  straightfor- 
ward study  of  one's  case  which  leaves  the  will  its  full 
power  to  act  at  least  with  self-respect.  Let  one  do 
what  he  is  not  ashamed  of,  and  manj^  things  become 
clear  at  once.  Hard  situations  will  not  always  yield  ; 
but  there  is  one  thing  to  which  the  hardest  situation 
will  incline  to  yield,  and  that  is  confidence  in  its 
ultimate  good  for  you,  because  it  is  the  situation 
you  are  in  and  have  to  deal  with.  The  force  ex- 
pended by  dissatisfied  persons  on  efforts  to  escape 
their  surroundings  would  often  pluck  the  sting  out 
of  the  incongruities  of  their  situation  and  track  them 
to  whole  hives  of  honey.     Believe  that  your  neigh- 


396  LIVING   BY    FAITH. 

bor  wants,  as  you  do,  to  see  riglit,  and  try  to  help 
him ;  and  if  he  sees  it  in  your  eyes,  you  have  made 
for  each  a  new  heart.  Believe,  too,  it  is  a  great 
thing  to  have  material  to  work  in  that  tries  your 
better  powers.  We  are  so  preoccupied  with  the 
other  side  of  the  globe  or  the  bigger  side  of  our  bar- 
gains that  we  do  not  see  the  earth  we  walk  on,  or 
the  sky  that  overleans  us,  or  the  trees  we  walk  under. 
Let  a  good  observer  describe  the  maples  in  the  street ; 
how  many  would  know  he  was  not  talking  of  far 
countries  ?  We  want  to  see  Crystal  Palaces  in  Paris 
or  London :  millions  of  God's  own  fall  on  a  winter's 
day,  perishing  as  they  fall  on  the  mndow-sills,  and  he 
who  should  describe  one  of  these  snowflakes  would 
be  thought  to  fable.  If  we  could  but  see  the  land- 
scape with  wholly  fresh  eyesight,  as  if  none  were  ever 
seen  before,  —  what  ecstasy  of  discovery!  What  will 
do  that  with  the  spiritual  landscape  we  call  our  lot? 

II.  One  thing  will  very  much  help  to  do  it,  —  be- 
lieving fully  in  the  preponderance  of  the  good  over 
the  evil  in  human  character  and  life.  What  a  lesson 
in  that  old,  old  story  of  Jonah  and  his  gourd  !  There 
sits  the  moody  prophet  on  the  ground,  looking  out  of 
his  gloomy  eyes  to  see  what  would  become  of  a  world 
he  could  not  find  anything  in  fit  to  live,  or  worth 
battling  wrong  to  save.  And  a  gourd's  kindly  shade 
comforts  him :  but  the  worm  destroys  it  in  a  night ; 
the  sun  beats  on  his  head,  so  that  he  faints  ;  and  he 
is  angry  for  the  gourd.  And  the  good  God  says  to 
him,  "  Thou  hast  had  pity  on  the  gourd,  for  which 
thou  hast  not  labored,  and  which  thou  madest  not  to 
grow,  which  grew  up  in  a  night,  and  perished  in  a 
night ;  and  should  not  I  spare  Nineveh,  that  great 
city,  wherein  are  more  than  a  hundred  and  twenty 


LIVING   BY   FAITH.  397 

thousand  persons  that  cannot  discern  between  their 
right  hand  and  their  left  hand,  and  also  many  cat- 
tle ?  " 

Here  is  the  type  of  the  despondent  temperament, 
for  which  nothing  genial  ever  turns  up.  But  it  is 
also  the  type  of  the  morally  blind  person  who  sees 
none  of  the  grand  forces  working  in  nature  and  the 
soul  against  evil,  and  whose  blindness  to  the  good 
without  him  becomes  demoralization  of  his  own  pow- 
ers of  action.  It  is  as  though  one  could  find  no 
better  way  of  treating  a  statue  than  to  count  its 
weather  stains,  or  the  sun  than  to  dwell  on  its  spots. 
It  is  this  disposition  in  disguise  that  is  constantly 
throwing  slurs  at  the  moral  reformer  as  a  visionary, 
who  wants  to  change  organic  tendencies,  and  expects 
to  abolish  the  strifes  and  abuses  this  bad  human  na- 
ture is  made  for. 

The  reformer's  criticism  implies  the  profoundest 
faith  in  good  behind  the  evil.  He  would  hold  his 
tongue  forever  if  he  did  not  feel  absolute  certainty 
that  the  people  and  parties  he  criticises  can  behave 
better  than  they  do  ;  that  they  are  capable  of  being 
masters  of  nobler  ground  than  they  hold,  and  of  being 
roused  to  take  it.  His  rebukes  are  the  highest  com- 
pliment that  can  be  paid  them  by  a  just  man,  if  they 
are  just  rebukes.  But  this  Jonah,  who  sees  in  him 
a  mere  scold,  is  the  very  opposite  of  a  believer ;  the 
prophet  has  gone  out  of  him.  Religious  pessimism 
is  the  belief  that  God  or  Satan  has  made  the  worst 
possible  world,  soul,  nature.  It  has  necessitated  — 
it  only  —  the  theory  of  an  atonement  or  mediation, 
which  is  nothing  but  a  pseudo-atonement  to  save  a 
lost  or  naturally  incapable  race.  There  is  no  irony 
so  great  as  to  call  this,  and  the  creeds  that  come  of  it, 


398  LIVING    BY    FAITH. 

faith.  Yet  most  Christians  know  no  other  definition 
of  faith. 

God  suffers  no  moral  disease  to  go  without  a  cure. 
The  fault  is  ours  if  we  do  not  find  it.  The  law  of 
the  soul  and  of  the  universe  is  one  law.  Antidotes 
grow  beside  the  poison  in  the  moral  world,  always. 
Suffering  brings  its  excuse  in  the  nobler  faith  that 
grows  out  of  it,  —  temptation  in  the  nerve  and 
sinew ;  even  wrong-doing  can  be  looked  back  on 
without  despair,  when  its  inevitable  consequences 
have  made  one  charitable  and  wise.  So  when  the 
soul  turns  sick  at  strife  and  iniquity,  and  one  would 
flee,  like  Jonah,  to  the  desert,  there  is  sovereign  help 
at  hand  to  shame  the  flight.  Does  not  He  who 
makes  the  sunshine,  the  slow  growths,  the  patient 
changes,  the  steady  persistence  of  beauty  and  order 
through  all  abuses  of  the  fair  earth  and  air  and  sea, 
speak  for  the  soul  in  all  this,  and  guarantee  its  hope  ? 
Ruskin  finely  says,  "  It  is  impossible  to  walk  across 
so  much  as  a  rood  of  the  natural  earth,  with  mind 
unagitated  and  rightly  poised,  without  receiving 
strength  from  some  stone,  flower,  leaf,  or  sound,  nor 
without  a  sense  as  of  a  dew  falling  on  you  out  of  the 
sky."  Yes,  if  we  will  but  stop  and  think,  one  mo- 
ment, what  it  means  that  the  very  earth  under  our 
feet  is  rolling  on  like  a  cannon  ball  through  space, 
yet  so  safe  and  sure  in  its  orbit  that  the  ant  can 
pile  its  little  hillock,  and  the  baby  balance  himself 
on  his  tiny  feet ! 

But  nature  is  not  man's  only  foil  to  doubt.  There 
are  faculties  made  to  master  it.  All  the  strength 
men  use  in  clinging  to  despondency  might  be  used  in 
the  service  of  a  spiritual  desire.  When  did  the  true 
mother  ever  despair  of  her  unnatural  son?     When 


LIVING   BY   FAITH.  899 

does  the  lover  despair  of  what  he  loves  ?  We  can 
hope  with  far  more  than  the  strength  of  despair,  for 
despair  is  against  our  wills.  The  faculties  are  dragged 
reluctant  into  its  service  ;  they  react  to  hope,  on  the 
slightest  encouragement,  with  enthusiasm.  Even  de- 
spair reacts  to  it.  We  are  made  for  hope.  And  be- 
cause it  is  so  native  and  intimate,  we  can  make  it 
that  marvelous  substance  of  things  hoped  for  which 
we  call  faith.  Why  doubt  human  destinies  ?  There 
are  credentials  for  the  fairest  future. 

Ought  not  every  instance  of  approved  virtue  to 
count  as  hope  for  all  men  ?  It  is  certainly  so  meant 
by  the  doer.  I  believe  in  this  kind  of  "  imputed 
righteousness,"  which  is  nothing  else  than  an  ele- 
ment in  what  social  reformers  call  the  '*  solidarity  of 
the  race."  Is  not  the  soul  the  same  in  all  ?  And  is 
not  all  vice  perversion  of  good  qualities,  conditioned 
on  ignorance  of  its  hatefulness  ?  Men  do  not  break 
laws  of  God  in  the  full  understanding  and  conscious- 
ness of  their  authority  and  worth.  Sin,  in  the  theo- 
logical sense,  is  monstrous  and  impossible.  Its  esti- 
mate runs  as  much  above  the  amount  of  evil  purpose 
in  the  world  as  it  does  below  the  amount  of  virtue. 
The  one-sidedness  of  the  theological  Jonah  or  pessi- 
mist is  shown  in  this,  —  that,  while  a  sin  is  to  him 
something  infinitely  wicked,  it  never  occurs  to  him 
to  call  a  good  action  infinitely  good.  His  emphasis 
leans,  I  think,  the  opposite  way  from  the  Divine  em- 
phasis. One  may  well  despair  who  has  the  eyes  of  a 
lynx  for  frailty  and,  except  when  he  is  looking  at 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  those  of  a  mole  for  worth. 

An  old  saint  said,  "Read  thou  the  earth  from 
heaven,  and  things  below  from  above."  And  as  it  is 
the  art  of  a  good  painter  to  catch  the  best  expres- 


400  LIVING   BY    FAITH. 

sion,  SO  ought  we  to  judge  one's  moral  destiny  from 
his  best  biases.  What  else  do  we  hold  worth  pre- 
serving ?  And  does  God  care  less  for  him  than  we  ? 
If  God  geometrizes  forms,  let  us  remember,  He  just 
as  certainly  idealizes  souls  ;  sees  the  flower  in  the 
seed,  the  fulfillment  in  the  promise,  —  or  what  hope 
for  any  of  us  ?  What  is  Providence  ?  If  it  is  any- 
thing, it  is  education  ;  it  is  treating  the  child  in 
knowledge  and  goodness  not  as  a  child  merely,  but 
as  the  promise  of  a  man.  God  idealizes  man.  He 
strews  his  eternal  truths  through  all  ages  and  all  re- 
ligions,—  forever  making  them  only  to  be  rest  and 
comfort  for  the  soul.  The  purity  of  heart  that  really 
sees  God  will  have  a  mighty  idealization  of  humanity 
at  the  very  basis  of  its  creed,  and  act  on  it  in  all  its 
treatment  of  the  vicious,  the  morally  incapable  and 
diseased.  It  is  time  Christendom  were  on  the  search 
for  it. 

God  knows  how  to  take  off  pressures  of  circum- 
stance that  stay  a  spirit's  growth.  Do  you  doubt  it? 
Go  up  a  mountain :  you  are  lighter  than  in  the  val- 
ley. Go  up  in  a  balloon :  the  weight  of  an  atmos- 
phere disappears.  Cannot  God  take  off  spiritual 
weights  by  changing  spiritual  climates  ?  How  blind 
to  presume  impossibilities  for  him  to  save,  to  forgive, 
to  bring  home  his  wanderers  ! 

The  Jonahs  tell  you  it  is  "  safer,"  at  least,  to  be- 
lieve their  way.  No,  it  is  always  safer  to  hope  for 
men  than  to  despair  of  them, — safer  for  one's  own 
power,  at  least,  which  depends  on  his  faith  in  good 
materials  to  work  in.  Best  not  to  try  one's  hand  at 
settling  the  probabilities  of  their  final  wreck. 

Immortality  is  immeasurable  chance  for  all.  In 
its  light,  all  strong,  blameless,  heroic  lives  —  divine 


LIVING   BY   FAITH.  401 

plants  by  the  wayside  —  tell  for  the  nature  they  ex- 
press. God  has  made  no  blunder  in  our  spiritual 
constitution.  Power  is  in  faith.  We  cannot  respect 
ourselves  so  long  as  we  cower  before  the  idea  of  any 
rights  that  evil  has  over  the  souls  of  men.  Concede 
it  one  soul,  you  make  your  own  its  slave.  It  was 
well  said,  "A  time  shall  come  when  we  shall  feel 
commanded  by  morality  not  only  to  cease  tormenting 
others,  but  also  ourselves ;  when  we  shall  wipe  away 
most  of  our  tears,  were  it  only  from  pride." 

III.  And  in  view  of  the  stern  facts  that  stand  in 
the  way  of  such  confidence,  we  must  make  spiritual 
imagination  a  part  of  our  most  cherished  life.  They 
are  not  wise  who  think  of  imagination  as  good  for 
poets  only ;  or,  rather,  are  we  not  all  poets  ?  Homer 
and  Shakespeare  are  great  only  by  interpreting  you 
to  yourself.  Do  they  import  their  tenderness  and 
sublimity  from  some  superhuman  world  ?  How, 
then,  should  men  have  found  these  so  near  their 
hearts  that  they  have  crowned  the  poet  with  eternal 
laurels  for  singing  them?  What  is  imagination? 
No  rare  faculty,  but  the  first  necessity  of  religious 
life.  Imagination  is  the  power  which  sees  relations 
that  lie  deeper  than  the  surface ;  sees  more  in  the 
dawn  than  colored  rays  that  light  us  to  toil ;  sees 
mystery  and  gospel  in  every  shaping  law  and  line. 
But,  besides  this,  imagination  is  the  power  to  see  the 
unseen ;  to  believe  where  senses  and  understanding 
fail  us;  to  bring  the  invisible  future,  whither  our 
hopes  tend,  where  lie  the  harvests  of  our  anxious 
sowing,  so  near  and  make  it  so  real  that  our  hearts 
are  assured,  our  fears  stilled,  our  sorrows  consoled. 
When  we  see  reunion  with  our  beloved  in  a  life  be- 
yond partings,  it  is  imagination  that  opens  the  inward 

26 


402  LIVING   BY   FAITH. 

eyes.  When  we  say,  feeling  ourselves  weak,  bur- 
dened and  bound,  that  we  live  by  faith,  it  is  the 
same  as  to  say  we  live  by  the  purified  imagination. 
When  we  hope  to  be  what  we  dream  it  would  be 
good  and  noble  to  be,  it  is  imagination  that  is  bear- 
ing us  on  its  wings.  It  is  the  world  of  ideals,  the  air 
of  heaven,  that  by  which  spirits  grow  more  fair  and 
blest.  He  who  associates  it  with  idle  reverie  and 
false  vision  mistakes  its  meaning ;  but  he  errs  not 
more  than  one  who  turns  from  it  as  a  faculty  given 
only  to  the  few,  as  a  power  needed  only  by  those 
who  live  apart  from  practical  interests  and  common 
things.  Oh,  no  !  it  is  that  which  puts  joy  and  cour- 
age into  them  all,  —  from  the  little  heart  that  glo- 
rifies your  home  to  the  mother's  breast  it  rests  on. 
Not  a  relation  of  life  can  be  cheerful  and  brave  with- 
out it. 


"THE  DUTY  OF  DELIGHT." i 


In  these  delicious  June  mornings,  when  the  earth 
is  a  promise,  and  the  heavens  are  a  benediction,  and 
our  altars  are  crowned  with  the  symbols  of  immortal 
purity  and  youth,  there  seems  to  come  forth  out  of 
nature  articulate  enforcement  of  the  creed  that  all 
worship  is  imperfect  and  unwarranted  that  does  not 
beghi  and  end  in  joy.  The  sorrows  and  conflicts 
of  life  seem  transient  amidst  this  evident  tendency 
of  nature  to  good.  Even  the  social  and  political 
errors  and  crimes,  that  seem  to  undo  so  much  good 
work  and  threaten  fresh  calamity,  are  alleviated  by 
the  thought  that  through  all  temporary  blight  sound 
and  remedial  laws  abide  in  the  earth  and  sky,  —  all 
pledged  to  show  not  only  that  nations  cannot  be 
blessed  while  they  sin,  but  that  the  Infinite  Love 
turns  not  from  his  beneficent  ways  even  while  men 
forget  Him,  but  waits  patiently  their  return.  It  is 
not  moral  indifference  that  makes  his  sun  shine  on 
the  evil  and  the  good,  and  the  fair  seasons  hold  on 
their  joy-giving  way,  though  men  and  nations  tram- 
ple each  other  under  foot,  and  fill  the  air  with  curses 
and  groans.  This  unchanging  serenity,  this  seem- 
ing unconcern  toward  all  human  grief,  pity,  indigna- 
tion, this  delay  to  blast  the  wicked,  this  outpouring 

1  As  preached  June  25,  1865. 


404  "  THE   DUTY   OF   DELIGHT." 

of  blessings  upon  all,  means  that  the  atrocities  of  tlie 
earth  are  but  of  to-day,  and  move  not  one  everlasting 
law  from  its  foundations  ;  that  Nature  in  patient 
prediction  guarantees  the  heavenly  life  on  earth. 

The  lurid  creeds  that  glower  over  mysteries  of  rep- 
robation appear  in  this  summer  glory  no  less  than 
atheistic ;  and  to  doubt  the  good  issue  of  all  worthy 
desires  and  hopes  is  a  sort  of  willful  obstinacy,  not 
to  say  impiety.  One  is  astonished  at  the  perverse- 
ness  which  has  taken  the  word  "  nature "  to  repre- 
sent a  state  of  separation  from  God  and  good ;  and 
regarded  the  world  as  a  temptation  of  Satan,  instead 
of  an  image  of  things  invisible  and  eternal,  made  for 
aiding  us  in  our  ascents  thereto.  Why  should  nature 
be  interpreted  from  the  sensual  instincts  of  those  who 
cannot  apprehend  the  spiritual  beauty,  order,  and  use 
which  inspire  it  and  which  it  suggests  to  the  earnest 
mind  ?  Yet  such  has  been  its  lot  in  the  prevailing 
theologies  :  they  resolutely  cut  off  the  Maker  from 
his  own  glorious  works,  and  then  close  up  his  mercy 
in  human  churches,  creeds,  and  forms. 

It  was  one  of  the  natural  consequences  of  that 
gross  and  unspiritual  use  which  Catholicism  made  of 
the  attractiveness  of  nature  that  Protestantism  re- 
acted to  the  opposite  extreme  :  repelling  and  de- 
nouncing it  in  the  name  of  the  Spirit ;  rejecting  not 
only  images  and  paintings  and  gorgeous  ritual,  but 
every  drawing  of  the  mind  towards  the  enjoyment 
of  visible  things.  Asceticism  always  succeeds  over- 
indulgence. Protestantism,  has  thus,  in  times  past, 
been  a  morose  virtue,  —  morose  in  its  creed,  morose 
in  its  demeanor,  intensely  contracted  in  its  appre- 
hension of  the  Divine  resources  for  human  salvation. 
For  of  these  resources  none  is  more  needful  than  that 


"  THE   DUTY   OF  DELIGHT."  405 

one  which  is  never  put  into  the  confessions,  and 
which  most  persons  would  be  shocked  at  the  very- 
thought  of  putting  there,  —  joy.  It  is  the  first  con- 
dition of  loving  God  that  we  should  look  confidingly 
on  his  world  as  opportunity;  that  we  should  suffer 
and  even  urge  all  innocent  joy  of  which,  we  are  ca- 
pable to  spring  up  and  flow  freely  as  the  very  in- 
spiration of  Him  who  is  himself  the  spiritual  Light 
and  Warmth.  This  groundwork  of  religion  is  com- 
ing to  be  recognized  ;  but  not  at  all  through  the  so- 
called  means  of  religious  influence ;  not  through 
what  has  hitherto  been  regarded  as  Divine  revela- 
tion, but  through  a  larger  appreciation  of  human 
nature.  Neither  delight  nor  even  cheerfulness  seems 
to  have  belonged  to  the  conception  of  inspiration  as 
given  in  the  sacred  books  of  the  past.  Religion  in 
these  is  too  profound  not  to  be  serious,  yet  not  wide 
enough  to  allow  the  entire  freedom  of  the  spiritual 
nature.  The  Buddhists  say  of  their  saviour  that  he 
was  never  but  once  known  to  smile,  and  the  beam  of 
that  smile  irradiated  the  heavens.  But  instantly  a 
voice  came  forth,  like  night,  and  dispelled  it,  saying, 
''  It  is  vain,  it  is  vain  !  it  cannot  stay."  If  you  judge 
of  Jesus  from  the  New  Testament  biographies,  how 
incapable  he  must  have  been  of  anything  like  humor 
or  pleasantry  !  And  yet  there  are  no  surer  signs  of 
spiritual  ease  and  liberty  than  these  genialities. 

Incapacity  for  them  would  be  proof  of  narrow 
sympathies,  not  of  perfection  at  all ;  and  that  it 
should  have  been  constantly  attributed  to  redeemers 
shows  how  crude  and  unreconciled  with  human  nature 
has  been  the  idea  of  religion  hitherto.  It  is  reserved 
for  a  later  period  of  human  culture  to  recognize  the 
soundness  of  the  spiritual  constitution,  —  the  Divine 


406 

sanction  written  on  the  rightly  regulated  use  of 
every  human  tendency. 

Savage  races,  indeed,  rudely  intimate  this,  in  their 
childish  obedience  to  instinct  in  the  name  of  religion. 
Joy  is  everywhere  a  part  of  rude  worship.  Syrian 
Astarte  and  Greek  Bacchus  were  greeted  with  mad 
leapings  and  convulsions  of  ecstasy.  The  Hebrew 
danced  and  sang  before  the  ark  of  Jehovah.  Wher- 
ever the  Sun  looked  down  on  the  tribes  devoted  to 
his  worship,  from  India  to  Mexico,  he  beheld  them 
circling  his  altars  with  dances  and  gesticulations  of 
delight. 

In  these  ways,  we  are  told,  "  Religions  of  Nature  " 
are  distinguished  from  "Religions  of  the  Spirit." 
But  there  is  more  of  "the  Spirit "  in  this  recognition 
of  joy  than  in  much  of  the  prevailing  Christianity, 
where  an  equal  barbarism  is  not  even  relieved  by  the 
happiness  which  shows  that  some  human  need  is  satis- 
fied. And  there  is  a  spiritual  "  Religion  of  Nature  " 
as  well  as  an  unspiritual.  There  is  a  joy  neither 
ecstatic  nor  boisterous,  demanding  neither  the  dance 
nor  the  song  ;  not  spasmodic,  but  calm  and  steady  as 
the  breathing  of  the  lungs  and  the  beating  of  the 
heart.  There  is  a  vital  gladness,  fed  by  the  health- 
ful perception  of  the  glory  and  beauty  of  God's 
works,  and  of  those  inner  motions  that  shape  all 
ways  to  good. 

There  is  even  a  settled  enthusiasm  in  all  one's 
doing  and  suffering,  let  him  but  know  his  choice 
noble  and  find  his  work  becoming,  and  so  reap  his 
harvest  not  in  the  far-off  issue  of  this  work,  but,  in 
large  measure,  in  the  doing  of  it  now ;  and  a  child- 
like rest  from  all  vexations  of  pride,  and  miseries  of 
remorse,  and  anxieties  of  self-distrust,   so  soon   as 


407 

one's  confidence  is  no  longer  in  the  perfection  of  his 
own  knowledge  or  the  unimpeachableness  of  his  own 
virtue,  but  in  the  omnipotence  of  the  Arm  on  which 
he  leans.  Surely  this  is  the  crown  of  the  religious 
life. 

"  Is  not  every  day  a  festival  to  the  good  man  ?  " 
asked  Diogenes. 

"  Neither  rich  furniture,"  says  Plutarch,  "  nor  il- 
lustrious descent,  nor  greatness  of  authority,  nor  elo- 
quence, can  procure  such  serenity  as  a  mind  kept 
untainted  from  base  purpose." 

And  hear  Epictetus  on  this  duty  of  delight : 
"  Ought  we  not,  whether  we  dig,  or  plow,  or  eat,  to 
sing  this  hymn  to  God?  Great  is  God,  who  has  sup- 
plied us  with  these  instruments  to  till  the  ground  ; 
great  is  God,  who  has  given  us  hands  and  organs  of 
digestion,  who  has  given  us  to  grow  insensible,  to 
breathe  in  sleep.  These  things  we  ought  forever  to 
celebrate ;  but  to  make  it  the  theme  of  the  greatest 
and  divinest  hymn,  that  He  has  given  us  the  power 
to  appreciate  these  gifts,  and  to  use  them  well.  .  .  . 
What  else  can  I  do,  a  lame  old  man,  but  sing  hymns 
to  God  ?  Were  I  a  nightingale,  I  would  act  the  part 
of  a  nightingale  ;  were  I  a  swan,  the  part  of  a  swan  ; 
but  since  I  am  a  reasonable  creature,  it  is  my  part  to 
praise  God.  This  is  my  business.  I  do  it.  Nor  will 
I  ever  desert  this  post,  so  long  as  it  is  vouchsafed 
me ;  and  I  call  on  you  to  join  me  in  the  same  song." 

And  once  more,  hear  Jeremy  Taylor  on  the  dis- 
ciplines of  this  duty  :  "  I  desire  you  to  observe  how 
good  a  God  we  serve,  one  of  whose  precepts  it  is  that 
we  should  rejoice.  He  hath  given  us  not  a  sullen, 
melancholy  spirit,  but  consigned  us  by  a  holy  con- 
science to  joys  unspeakable  and  full  of  glory.     And 


408 

from  hence  you  can  infer  that  those  who  sink  under 
persecution,  or  are  impatient  in  sad  accidents,  put  out 
their  own  fires,  which  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  hath 
kindled,  and  lose  those  glories  that  stand  behind  the 
cloud.  .  .  .  He  intends  every  accident  to  minister  to 
virtue,  and  every  virtue  is  the  mother  and  nurse  of 
joy." 

The  best  men  in  all  enlightened  religions,  how- 
ever differing  in  other  respects,  unite  on  this  duty 
of  inward  cheerfulness.  There  is,  indeed,  a  certain 
geniality  that  underlies  all  faithfulness  of  thought 
and  life ;  it  might  well  be  called  the  smile  of  God 
reflected  in  the  deeps  of  the  human  spirit  from  its 
childhood  on,  so  long  as  it  remains  true  to  its  own 
nature.  There  can  be  no  duty  more  imperative  than 
to  win  this  :  because  without  it  we  are  incompetent 
to  think  broadly,  to  act  decisively,  to  meet  care  and 
trouble  hopefully ;  without  it  compassion  loses  its 
tenderness,  and  charity  its  power  to  encourage,  and 
forgiveness  its  gift  of  healing ;  the  lack  of  it  darkens 
the  homely  paths  of  occupation  and  discipline  which 
all  of  us  must  tread ;  and  there  is  no  grandeur  in  op- 
portunity and  no  glory  in  responsibility,  if  this  do 
not  welcome  them. 

"  The  duty  of  delight  "  sounds  like  that  prevail- 
ing commonplace  of  a  selfish  philosophy,  that  "  hap- 
piness is  our  being's  end  and  aim."  But  this,  as  com- 
monly interpreted,  means  the  reference  of  conduct  to 
personal  interest,  well  or  ill  understood;  while  the  de- 
light which  we  are  describing  is  not  sought  because 
it  is  pleasant,  but  because  it  is  the  state  becoming 
the  children  of  such  a  Father  as  God  is,  and  the  heirs 
of  such  opportunity  as  ours.  And  its  joy  is  in  a 
hearty  appreciation  of  his  works  and  ways,  and  not 


"THE   DUTY    OF   DELIGHT."  409 

in  possessions  of  any  sort.  In  its  religious  aspect  it 
is  thanksgiving  to  the  Wisdom  that  is  seen  to  be  or- 
dering human  life  with  infinite  graciousness,  hedging 
in  our  ways  from  destruction,  and  compelling  us  to 
righteousness  and  immortal  liberty.  Practically  it  is 
the  constant  direction  of  the  mind  on  that  side  of 
our  circumstances  which  is  fitted  to  encourage  and 
quicken  us ;  and  as  steadfast  a  rejection  of  whatever 
would  dishearten  our  moral  purpose,  or  waste  life  in 
profitless  repining.  It  is  therefore  pursued  in  forget- 
fulness  of  our  own  interest  in  it. 

Whosoever  goes  to  his  work  rejoicing  in  the  vigor 
of  a  generous  motive ;  whosoever  abandons  a  vice  be- 
cause fascinated  by  the  idea  of  self-control  and  the 
loveliness  of  the  better  way  •  whosoever  goes  aside 
to  do  a  kindness  out  of  the  pure  love  of  the  neighbor, 
manifestly  finds  the  ground  of  his  content  in  the  sur- 
render of  himself  to  what  seems  to  him  richly  to  de- 
serve the  service  he  pays.  The  content  is  loved  not 
because  it  is  a  gratification,  but  because  it  is  the 
frame  which  suits  this  service.  All  other  search  for 
happiness  fails,  because  it  is  really  the  effort  to  sat- 
isfy some  instinct,  whose  very  essence  it  is  not  to  be 
satisfied,  but  to  crave  ceaselessly  and  forever. 

The  miser  thinks  he  seeks  gold,  but  no  amount  of 
gold  gets  him  pleasure.-  He  is  not  seeking  gold,  but 
gratifying  the  instinct  of  appropriation,  which  neither 
gold  nor  anything  else  can  satisfy ;  because  after  all 
accumulation  it  remains  the  same  instinct  still.  The 
dissolute  person  thinks  he  seeks  wine  or  social  enter- 
tainment, dice  or  licentious  books,  or  this  or  that  de- 
praved person,  but  he  has  these  day  after  day,  year 
after  year,  till  the  verj^  power  to  execute  his  desires 
is  exhausted,  yet   with  no  satisfaction  at  the  last 


410  "THE  DUTY   OF   DELIGHT." 

more  than  at  the  first.  He  is  not  seeking  these  things, 
but  the  gratification  of  a  sensual  instinct,  whose 
sensuality  is  not  abated  by  gratification,  but  remains 
or  grows  a  fiercer  agony  of  craving  still.  And  it  is 
equally  true  that  the  morbidly  conscientious  person 
is  mistaken  in  supposing  he  seeks  a  greater  number 
of  duties  performed  or  a  greater  perfection  in  the  do- 
ing of  them.  He  shall  add  on  to  his  account  with  God 
and  his  conscience  indefinitely  in  this  direction,  and 
yet  be  none  the  happier.  For  he  is  seeking  no  such 
thing,  but  gratifying  an  over-severe  instinct  of  self- 
judgment,  which  is  a  constant  element  of  his  life.  Of 
all  these  aims,  whether  noble  or  ignoble,  though  in 
very  different  ways,  it  is  alike  true  that  they  centre 
in  the  subject  himself.  They  are  satisfactions  of  a 
thirst  for  possession  of  some  kind,  as,  in  the  last- 
mentioned  case,  the  possession  of  merit ;  in  the  first, 
that  of  the  sweet  sense  of  accumulation.  They  are 
in  nowise  rejoicings  in  beauty  and  guardianship  and 
benignity  in  the  care  of  One  higher  than  we. 

It  was  required  of  those  who  sought  for  the  ''  phi- 
losopher's stone  "  that  they  should  not  do  this  with 
any  covetous  desire  to  be  rich,  else  they  should  not 
find  it.  We  shall  not  find  cheerfulness  in  any  seek- 
ing after  happiness  as  a  personal  unconditional  pos- 
session. The  instinct  of  getting  remains  unsatisfied, 
after  all  accumulations  whatsoever. 

We  talk  of  "our  interests  "  as  if  we  were  very  cer- 
tain that,  if  we  could  possess  certain  advantages  over 
our  neighbors,  we  should  be  indisputably  gainers 
thereby.  Who  knows  but  we  should  be  losers  ? 
Even  the  alchemists  laid  it  down  as  sure  that,  if 
they  were  greedy,  they  might  indeed  get  many 
things,  but  never  the  stone  they  were  seeking. 


"THE   DUTY    OF   DELIGHT."  411 

Cheerfulness  is  the  gold  that  gives  all  possessions 
their  value.  And  all  the  hoards  of  a  life-time  of  toil 
are  but  rubbish,  if  care  and  cunning  have  spoiled  the 
capacity  for  that.  It  comes  in  devotion  to  what  can- 
not be  brought  under  the  private  key,  —  in  the  aim 
to  do  and  be  the  best,  broadest,  freest,  healthfulest 
it  is  in  us  to  be.  It  comes  in  the  repose  of  implicit 
confidence  in  a  right  purpose.  It  comes  in  the  free- 
ing one's  self  from  every  weight  through  the  thought 
of  an  Infinite  Goodness  and  the  loving  appreciation 
of  its  purposes  towards  us. 

Thirst  of  possession  cannot  bring  content  of  any 
sort ;  but  how  sweetly  one  could  rest  in  the  fathom- 
less depths  of  absolute  Love ! 

Could  we  bring  down  the  stars  of  heaven  to  be 
bought  and  sold ;  could  we  pack  the  emerald  and 
amber  of  the  sunset  in  our  cabinets  and  call  them 
ours ;  could  we  take  the  golden  bridges  of  the  morn- 
ing, that  overleap  the  leagues  of  open  sea,  and  run 
our  railroads  along  their  beams  ;  could  we  stop  the 
moon  from  shining  when  we  wanted  darkness  to 
cover  our  deeds ;  could  we  direct  the  path  of  the 
comet  to  suit  our  notions,  and  reform  at  will  the  an- 
cient ways  of  God,  —  then  surely  we  should,  so  far, 
be  despoiled  of  our  heaven  and  our  immortal  life. 
But  God  hath  exalted  the  heavens  above  our  dreams 
of  ownership,  and  thereby  made  them  able  to  give 
us  relief  and  joy  such  as  no  earthly  thing  could  be- 
stow, which  we  can  hope  to  appropriate  and  use  at 
our  will.  And  so,  happily  for  us,  will  it  always  be. 
Something  unfathomable,  unappropriable,  will  al- 
ways remain,  a  temple  where  we  can  adore.  When 
the  mountain  gorges  are  stripped  and  their  solemn 
waters  silenced  that  our  furnaces  may  be  fed,  and 


412  "THE 

the  spell  of  holiness  that  dwelt  in  the  loneliest  seas 
shall  have  been  broken  by  profanity  and  violence, 
even  then  the  deeps  overhead  will  endure,  unpol- 
luted and  unprofaned,  to  teach  us  tbe  cheerfulness  and 
love  that  shall  yet  redeem  the  market  and  the  State, 
and  make  our  possession  serve  holy  ends.  There 
will  still  be  far  solitudes  of  impenetrable  light  and 
peace,  of  which  we  shall  know  by  faith,  but  which 
our  science  can  never  search  nor  our  eyes  behold, 
to  show  the  folly  not  only  of  our  conceits,  but  of  our 
greedy  self-seeking  and  anxious  self-protecting. 

And  the  inward  cheerfulness,  which  I  have  de- 
scribed as  repose  in  what  we  cannot  hope  to  make 
subservient  to  selfish  uses,  let  us  notice,  is  true  liberty. 
It  is  the  cheerfulness  and  ease  of  one  who  thoroughly 
loves  and  trusts  all  of  life  as  meaning  our  good. 
This  alone  has  what  it  seeks,  and  wills  only  to  per- 
form. 

I  do  not  say  such  cheerfulness  as  this  is  easy,  or 
that  it  is  not  far  less  so  to  some  than  to  others  ;  but 
I  believe  it  is  profoundly  needed  by  all.  And  I  am 
sure  there  is  not  one  of  us  all  but  can  attain  some 
good  measure  of  it,  by  accustoming  himself  to  put 
away  resolutely  all  narrow  estimates  of  events  as 
good  or  evil  through  their  relation  to  his  own  per- 
sonal self.  Let  us  open  ourselves  more  and  more  to 
the  comprehension  of  broad  and  liberal  uses  divinely 
stored  in  every  experience.  Seeking  these  meanings 
in  our  circumstances,  not  such  as  our  contracted 
fears  or  desires  would  impress  on  them,  we  shall 
surely  find  "those  glories  that  stand  behind  the 
cloud." 

What  liberty  there  is  in  the  cheerfulness  of  one 
who  so  implicitly  confides  in  the  instinct  of  his  con- 


413 

science  that  this  acts  in  him  with  the  force  and  clear- 
ness of  a  Divine  suggestion  !  Sure  that  it  requires 
no  anxious  balancing  of  evidences,  he  has  room  to  be 
patient,  self-collected,  free  in  the  motions  of  his  will. 
He  can  direct  his  whole  force  to  the  instant  control 
of  his  passions,  into  the  service  of  such  unquestion- 
able right. 

And  what  liberty  in  the  cheerfulness  that  shines 
through  the  hard  lot  of  many  a  laboring  person,  out 
of  the  resolution  to  ennoble  labor  by  working  in  a 
faithful  and  becoming  manner ;  to  make  it  cultivate 
in  some  measure  his  finer  senses,  and  help  him  appre- 
ciate whatever  is  fair  and  good  ! 

What  liberty  there  is  in  a  trust  in  the  power  of 
character  absolute  enough  to  be  genial ;  so  that  there 
is  no  need  of  a  stiff,  self-conscious  air,  nor  frowning 
brow,  in  saying,  when  admonished  to  strain  some 
point  of  principle  for  the  sake  of  practical  immediate 
effect,  "It  is  better  for  you,  friends,  that  I  give 
assurance  of  my  own  proper  manhood  than  purchase 
a  prospect  of  helping  the  most  sacred  cause  by  the 
sacrifice  of  my  self-respect  "  ! 

"  The  year 's  at  the  spring, 
And  day 's  at  the  morn  ; 
Morning 's  at  seven ; 
The  hill-side  's  dew-pearled  : 
The  lark 's  on  the  wing ; 
The  snail 's  on  the  thorn ; 
God 's  in  his  heaven  — 
All 's  right  with  the  world." 

And  all  this  looks,  perhaps,  unattainable  in  pro- 
portion as  it  is  appreciated.  Yet  something  of  it  is 
surely  possible ;  and  out  of  that  more,  and  so  more 
still.  It  is  not  so  high  that  great  powers  are  needed 
to  reach  up  to  it.    It  demands  no  great  effects  at  the 


414  "  THE  DUTY    OF  DELIGHT." 

moment ;  no  deeds  that  strike  the  senses.  Its  vic- 
tories are  in  that  silence  where  all  pure  hearts  may 
dwell,  and  where  God  knows  how  to  exalt  the  humble 
and  the  weak.  And  it  has  one  mighty  source  of 
encouragement.  There  is  nothing  in  character  so 
magnetic  as  cheerfulness.  There  is  nothing  that  so 
swiftly  tells  upon  the  circle  in  which  one  is  moving, 
or  is  reflected  back  to  him  so  inspiringly  from  every 
face  on  which  it  falls,  from  every  life  to  which  its 
light  is  turned. 

The  blessing  which  good  men  bestow  on  others 
is  not  so  much  in  any  special  act  of  admonition  or 
encouragement,  or  in  any  gift  they  make,  as  in  the 
abiding  tenor  of  their  inward  lives.  There  are  many 
whose  hands  give  favors  and  whose  words  send  joy, 
who  yet  cannot  reach  that  which  gives  a  rarer  and 
finer  delight  still.  For  there  are  some  whose  very 
presence  is  a  blessing,  —  whom  to  look  upon  is  to  feel 
new  courage  to  take  up  toils,  deprivations,  cares ;  to 
think  hopefully  of  man  ;  to  believe  all  noble  achieve- 
ment possible,  and  victory  sure  for  all  that  deserves 
to  succeed ;  to  see  a  more  glorious  sun,  and  feel  breezes 
from  the  eternal  hills  where  God's  own  might  abides. 

There  is  no  one  who  keeps  a  genial  mood  through 
all  seasons  and  times  but  can  bestow  much  of  this 
precious  gift,  and  that  though  it  be  only  the  good 
fortune  of  a  happy  temperament  which  makes  the 
sunshine.  What,  then,  if  it  be  the  transfiguration  of 
the  character  by  the  mastery  of  itself  and  its  lot,  and 
the  consequent  inflowing  of  the  liberty  and  light  of 
God !  A  volume  this  of  his  illuminating,  wide  open 
at  pictures  that  to  see  is  to  be  blessed  forever,  writ 
all  over  with  the  secrets  of  a  true  manly  or  womanly 
character.     Such  cheer  is  our  living  gospel  for  the 


415 

quickening  of  the  world  to-day.  We  shall  best  prove 
what  God  is  by  showing  a  genial  recognition  of  beau- 
ty in  all  his  present  works,  and  of  blessing  in  all 
his  visible  ways.  We  shall  best  justify  our  faith  in 
man's  moral  power  by  the  actual  overcoming  of  the 
dark  side  of  life  and  character,  and  our  claim  for 
the  freedom  of  reason  by  the  refreshing  and  kindly 
truths  it  brings  us.  We  shall  most  effectually  cast 
out  of  others  the  fear  of  death  by  that  unfaltering 
cheerfulness  which  proves  that  the  power  of  death  is 
past  for  us,  and  the  substance  of  immortality  really 
come.  We  make  another  man's  unbelief  in  prin- 
ciples intolerable  to  him  when  we  demonstrate  in  our- 
selves the  power  of  a  belief  in  them  to  comfort  and 
enliven  us.  And  sureljs  better  than  all  exhortation 
or  warning  to  the  timid  and  wavering  in  a  just  cause 
is  the  sight  of  one  who  goes  forward  to  meet  the 
emergency,  cheerful  and  untroubled,  saying,  *'  This 
way  only  lies  victory  and  joy." 

And,  finally,  this  cheerfulness  is  efficient  because 
it  is  spontaneous  and  natural.  On  the  noblest  works 
of  art  there  is  one  unmistakable  sign  and  stamp, — 
that  of  the  delight  the  artists  found  in  doing  them. 
And  you  will  find  the  same  stamp  on  every  good 
work  of  the  hands,  the  head,  or  the  heart.  From 
this  come  clearness  of  sight,  freedom  of  action,  ease, 
delicacy,  and  every  form  of  power.  It  is  all  one  in 
the  so-called  ''fine  arts,"  or  in  the  finer  art  of  life. 
Whatever  we  do,  to  do  it  spontaneously,  earnestly, 
with  heart  and  hope  therein,  —  this  is  sure  eflBciency, 
success,  and  fair  issue. 


TRANSCENDENTALISM. 


"  Nothing  is  easier,"  said  Voltaire,  "  than  for  peo- 
ple to  read  and  converse  to  no  purpose.  One  of  the 
ancients  wrote  a  book  to  prove  that  every  word  was 
an  ambiguity.' '  The  epigram  of  a  French  diplomat, 
"Words  were  invented  to  conceal  meaning,"  passed 
into  a  proverb.  This  unbelief  in  the  virtue  of  hu- 
man speech  may  have  proceeded  from  deeper  unbe- 
lief in  the  virtue  of  mankind.  Our  age  has  a  hap- 
pier view  of  social  relations,  and  pursues  mutual  com- 
prehension with  boundless  faith  in  the  tongue  and 
pen.  Yet  its  speculative  and  religious  terminology 
does  not  yield  even  an  alphabet  of  conversation. 
Our  formulas,  piled  in  the  pride  of  classification, 
prove  but  bricks  of  the  ancient  Babel,  after  all,  and 
tumble  back,  ineffectual,  upon  the  heads  of  the  build- 
ers. Never  was  colloquial  humanity  farther  from 
Plato's  all-important  preliminary  of  clear  definitions. 
There  is  no  virtue  in  "  star-eyed  science  "  to  dispel 
these  enduring  aspects  of  the  truth  the  idealist 
sings :  — 

"  We  are  spirits  clad  in  veils ; 
Heart  by  heart  was  never  seen  : 
All  our  deep  communing  fails 
To  remove  the  shadowy  screen." 

Yet  must  we  have  communion  on  the  best  terras 

1  Reprinted  from  the  Radical  Review  for  November,  1877. 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  417 

possible ;  and  so  there  is  deeper  interest  than  ever  in 
bringing  speech  to  judgment  and  words  to  legitimate 
meanings.  We  shall  hardly  prosper  in  this  work  till 
we  reform  the  habit  of  defining  terras  of  large  histor- 
ical significance  by  current  meanings  or  associations, 
ignoring  their  essential  purport  in  the  philosophy  of 
mind.  Thus,  recent  materialists,  in  general,  treat 
with  contempt  such  terms  as  theism,  theology,  relig- 
ion, as  concerned  with  an  external  personal  God;  al- 
though these  terms  have  always  represented,  at  bot- 
tom, the  effort  to  find  unity  and  substance^  as  well  as 
providence,  in  the  world.  The  reason  given  for  this 
rejection  —  that,  unless  words  are  used  in  their  cur- 
rent meaning,  they  will  be  misunderstood  —  is  un- 
fortunate ;  it  being  obvious  that  a  material  part  of 
the  current  meaning  itself  is  here  rejected,  and  injus- 
tice done  to  great  permanent  tendencies  of  human 
nature.  The  term  '*  transcendental "  is  a  notable  in- 
stance of  the  same  kind. 

The  popular  use  of  this  word  to  signify  the  incom- 
prehensible and  impracticable  is  natural  enough,  since 
philosophers  are  the  fathers  of  it,  and  have  applied 
it  to  matters  that  do  really  lie  apart  from  common 
observation.  We  cannot  wonder  that  it  was  given 
over  to  Satan  by  the  Church  and  the  World,  among 
the  other  dark  things,  —  such  as  dark  glens,  dark 
plans,  dark  skins,  heathen  blindness,  and  "  the  Black 
Art,"  — to  be  kept  at  safe  distance,  with  holy  horror 
by  the  devout,  and  off-hand  contempt  by  the  wise  in 
their  own  generation.  For  the  old  theology  could 
not  help  being  startled  at  this  Shadow,  writing  doom 
on  its  walls ;  and  to  cry  *'  fool  and  mad  "  was  but 
natural  instinct.  Assailed  by  ignorance  and  blind 
authority,  the  term  has  been  even  more  contemptu- 

27 


418  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

ously  treated  by  that  current  form  of  system-building 
which  repudiates  metaphysics  in  the  name  of  science. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  metaphysicians  who 
object  that  it  means  substitution  of  sentiment  for 
perception,  and  assumption  for  induction.  There  are 
HegeUans  who  sacrifice  it  to  a  superficial  etymology, 
and  say  with  Castelar,  in  his  eloquent  essays  on  "Re- 
publicanism in  Europe,"  that  ''  in  ancient  thought 
the  absolute  is  transcendental ;  in  Hegel  it  is  inher- 
ent," —  a  distinction  for  which  the  proper  meaning 
of  the  word  in  question  affords  no  authority.  Led  in 
the  same  way,  perhaps,  by  an  etymological  inference, 
not  a  few  would  consign  Transcendentalism  to  the 
past,  as  a  form  of  that  very  Supernaturalism  against 
which  it  has  claimed  to  be  the  one  thorough  and 
effective  protest.  Strange,  indeed,  if  a  philosophy 
whose  central  idea  is  the  immanence  of  the  Infinite 
should  mean  to  affirm  that  an  outside  God  is  working 
on  the  world,  whether  by  miracles  or  in  human  ways  ! 
Transcendentalism  is  a  far  stronger  reaction  against 
the  old  theology  than  scientific  induction  can  be 
without  it ;  yet  there  is  danger  that,  in  the  very  im- 
petus of  their  reaction,  scientists  shall  come  to  con- 
found this  indispensable  ally  with  the  foe  they  would 
destroy.  This  will  naturally  happen  in  proportion 
as  they  accept  the  explanation  of  thought,  laid  down 
in  recent  physical  text-books,  as  "  an  impression  on 
the  brain  derived  from  the  external  world  through 
the  medium  of  the  senses ;  "  since,  while  the  tran- 
scendentalist  and  the  supernaturalist  are  at  utter  va- 
riance on  points  of  utmost  moment,  this  explanation 
is  equally  rejected  by  both.  The  absorbing  question 
of  the  hour  has  here  disregarded  organic  and  perma- 
nent bearings,  and  makes  one  incidental  analogy  the 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  419 

test  of  affinity  and  the  measure  of  worth.  A  similar 
ilhision  confounds  the  philosophical  idea  of  intuition 
with  the  theological  idea  of  inspiration,  because  both 
deny  the  exclusive  claim  of  "experience"  to  be  the 
source  of  knowledge,  and  because  both  are  supposed 
to  afErin  certitude  in  regard  to  unsolved  and  open 
questions,  and  an  ideal  basis  for  what  are  "  pure  re- 
sults of  historical  derivation."  Their  common  rec- 
ognition of  relations  with  the  Infinite,  though  under 
very  different  meanings  of  the  word,  is  thought  to 
imply  that  they  agree  in  denying  the  universality  of 
law ;  and  their  common  demand  that  the  less  shall 
be  ascribed  to  a  greater  than  itself,  rather  than  the 
greater  to  a  less,  to  indicate  that  they  are  alike  in 
tracing  the  world  to  supernatural  will.  Such  confu- 
sion of  ideas  increases  with  the  lapse  of  time  during 
which  study  has  taken  an  almost  exclusively  phys- 
ical direction,  until  the  philosophy  which  emphasizes 
principles  has  come  to  pass  for  an  ambitious  pretense 
of  wisdom  beyond  what  is  known  as  well  as  what  is 
"  written  ; "  so  that  even  the  effort  to  show  that  it  is 
simply  common  sense  and  universal  method  provokes 
a  new  form  of  contempt,  as  if  much  bluster  had  been 
made  in  proclaiming  what,  after  all,  is  confessed  to 
be  but  a  form  of  commonplace.  The  result  of  all 
this  is  an  impression  that  Transcendentalism  was  the 
opinion  of  a  small  and  eccentric  school,  and  has  al- 
read}^  given  place  to  "  the  scientific  method,"  —  the 
positive  gospel  of  this  and  all  coming  time. 

As  one  by  whom  this  philosophy  was  accepted,  not 
as  the  opinion  of  a  few  thinkers,  but  as  the  independ- 
ent rationale  of  human  thought^  and  who  has  found 
its  main  postulates  essentially  undisturbed  by  full 
acceptance  of  the  results  of  science,  I  propose  to  pre- 


420  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

sent  that  view  of  its  meaning  which  its  history  ap- 
pears to  me  to  warrant,  and  to  state  some  of  its  vital 
relations  to  the  sanity  and  progress  of  mind. 

That  the  name  "  Transcendentalism  "  was  given,  a 
century  ago,  to  a  method  in  philosophy  opposed  to 
the  theory  of  Locke  —  that  all  knowledge  comes 
from  the  senses  —  is  more  widely  known  than  the 
fact  that  what  this  method  afiB.rraed  and  involved  is 
of  profound  import  for  all  generations.  It  empha- 
sized Mind  as  formative  force  behind  all  definable 
contents  or  acts  of  consciousness,  —  as  that  which 
makes  it  possible  to  speak  of  anything  as  known. 
It  recognized,  as  primal  condition  of  knowing,  the 
transmutation  of  sense-impressions  by  original  laws 
of  mind,  whose  constructive  power  is  not  to  be  ex- 
plained or  measured  by  the  data  of  sensation  ;  just 
as  they  use  the  eye  and  ear  to  transform  unknown 
spatial  motions  into  the  obviously  human  conceptions 
which  we  call  color  and  sound.  All  this  the  Lockian 
system  overlooked,  —  a  very  serious  omission,  as  re- 
gards both  science  and  common  sense. 

Locke  was  probably  somewhat  misconstrued.  He 
meant  that  sense-impressions  come  first  in  our  con- 
scious experience  ;  his  concern  being  with  the  appar- 
ent process,  rather  than  with  the  real  origin  of  our 
knowledge.  He  was  aiming,  not  only  to  reduce  to 
plain  good  sense  the  mediaeval  metaphysics  of  his 
time,  but  also  to  combat  an  enthusiasm  of  the  self- 
deifying  sort,  resulting  from  the  spiritual  ferment  of 
the  English  Revolution.  He  had  seen  how  easily 
fanatical  ecstasies  were  glorified  as  vision  and  revela- 
tion, and  how  perilous  they  were  to  the  political  and 
religious  liberty  which  he  was  building  into  positive 
institutions.      His  famous  comparison  of  the  mind 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  421 

to  a  sheet  of  blank  paper  was,  I  suppose,  a  vigor- 
ous way  of  repudiating  these  imaginary  inspirations 
and  emphasizing  the  public  and  common  elements 
of  experience,  rather  than  the  startling  assertion  it 
would  seem  to  be,  that  the  substance  by  and  through 
which  we  think  and  know  is  of  itself  sheer  passivity 
and  emptiness.  He  rejected  "  innate  ideas,"  consid- 
ered as  distinct  conceptions,  supernaturally  conveyed 
into  the  mind,  and  there  preexisting,  ready  for  use, 
independent  of  education  and  even  of  growth.  His 
crusade  against  this  antecedence  of  ready-made  ideas 
as  a  mass  of  concrete  details  prior  to  experience 
seems  to  have  drawn  away  his  attention  from  other 
and  better  modes  of  conceiving  the  originality  and 
primacy  of  mind.  He  posits  "  experience "  as  the 
only  source  of  knowledge  ;  forgetting  to  inquire  how 
the  ^'  blank  paper,"  which  could  not  respond  to  in- 
nate impressions,  should  be  in  any  degree  more  com- 
petent to  report  results  of  "  experience "  without 
constructive  energies  of  its  own.  To  pretend  that  it 
could  do  so  would  have  been  simply  to  flee  from  su- 
pernaturalism  in  one  form  to  fall  into  it  in  another. 
Here  is  the  unconscious  incoherence  in  Locke's  ac- 
count of  the  matter,  as  in  that  of  John  Stuart  Mill, 
the  more  recent  apostle  of  "  experience."  Yet 
Locke's  own  phraseology  shows  that  his  good  sense 
was  not  unaware  of  facts  wholly  incompatible  with  the 
"  blank  paper "  theory ;  as  when  he  says  (Book  H. 
chap.  i.  §  4)  that  the  "  operations  of  the  soul  (in  re- 
flection) do  furnish  the  understanding  with  another 
set  of  ideas  which  could  not  be  had  from  things 
without,  we  observing  them  in  ourselves." 

Everything  depends,  if  we  would  fairly  interpret  a 
thinker,  on  recognizing  the  emphasis  given  to  certain 


422  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

elements  of  his  thought  by  his  special  aim,  and  read- 
ing between  the  lines  other  elements,  which  he  evi- 
dently takes  for  granted,  as  not  needing  statement 
at  all.  Locke,  although  a  clear  -  headed  man  and 
liberal  politician,  was  not  a  metaphysical  thinker. 
The  profound  meaning  involved  in  the  fact  that 
such  constant  ideas  as  Substance,  Personality,  Law, 
Cause,  "  could  not  be  had  from  things  without " 
never  interested  his  practical  and  concrete  mind, 
which  thought  it  quite  sufficient  to  mass  such  facts 
under  the  vague  term  "  experience,"  and  let  them 
go  at  that.  In  this  respect  his  example  is  largely 
followed  in  days  when  science,  building  upon  "  ex- 
perience," is  to  a  very  great  extent  absorbed  in  col- 
lecting innumerable  physical  details.  Yet  I  doubt 
if  Locke  would  have  relished  being  made  the  father 
of  the  "  Sensational  School,"  and  put  into  the  limbo 
of  forever  decanting  sense  -  impressions  into  mental 
bottles  to  prove  that  physical  phenomena  are  the 
sole  authors  and  finishers  of  man.  Had  he  inquired 
into  the  distinctive  origin  and  significance  of  what 
he  called  "  reflection,"  he  might  have  reached  the 
starting-point  of  Transcendentalism.  He  was  a  keen 
observer  of  palpable  processes  ;  and  this  habit  is 
very  apt  to  hide  those  conditions  in  mental  faculty 
which  the  processes  do  not  exhibit,  but  imply  ;  un- 
til, as  in  much  modern  method  which  passes  for 
scientific,  the  mere  succession  of  phenomena  is  sub- 
stituted for  the  substance  in  which  they  inhere. 
Neither  the  self-consciousness  of  mind  as  such,  nor 
the  forces  that  lie  behind  conscious  understanding, 
attracted  Locke's  utilitarian  temperament.  He  was, 
so  far,  the  ancestor  of  that  school  of  evolutionists 
which  holds  itself  at  war  with   Transcendentalism. 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  423 

But  he  could  not  have  anticipated  the  positive  denial 
of  such  transcendental  conditions  in  the  next  cen- 
tury by  his  enthusiastic  disciples,  Helvetius,  Condil- 
lac,  and  others,  who  were  preparing  the  French  mind 
to  throw  aside,  in  sheer  reaction,  not  only  the  con- 
tinuity of  human  evolution  through  the  past,  but 
that  constant,  undemonstrable  element  that  makes 
the  prime  condition  of  present  certitude. 

What  we  conceive  these  schools  to  have  misprized 
is  the  living  substance  and  function  of  Mind  itself. 
Conscious  of  its  own  energy ;  productive  of  its  own 
processes ;  active  even  in  receiving ;  giving  its  own 
construction  to  its  incomes  from  the  unknown 
through  sense ;  thus  involved  in  those  very  contents 
of  time  and  space  which,  as  historical  antecedents, 
ajpi^ear  to  create  it,  —  mind  is  obviously  the  expo- 
nent of  forces  more  spontaneous  and  original  than 
any  special  product  of  its  own  experience.  Behind 
all  these  products  must  be  that  substance  in  and 
through  which  they  are  produced.  Or  are  we,  as 
Taine  will  have  it,  mere  trains  of  sensation  in  the 
void ;  successions  of  thoughts  without  a  thinker ; 
incessant  flowing,  yet  no  living  stream ;  a  process 
where  what  proceeds  may  be  neglected  or  is  naught? 
Can  the  knower  be  mere  resultant  of  his  own  knowl- 
edge, call  it  "experience  "  or  what  you  will?  How 
should  there  be  any  knowing  of  things  at  all,  except 
there  be  first  one  competent  to  know,  whose  nature 
is  father  and  fount  of  the  act  of  cognition  ?  When 
you  assert  that  all  is  from  experience,  have  you  for- 
gotten the  experiencer  himself?  Or,  if  you  reply 
that  he  is  of  course  taken  for  granted,  then  pray  do 
not  immediately  consign  him  over  among  his  prod- 
ucts, but   consider  what   your   concession   involves. 


424  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

Is  he  not  more  than  all  his  past  processes,  and  pri- 
mal condition  of  all  that  are  to  come?  If  personality- 
be  not  real,  science  is  at  war  with  human  conscious- 
ness. If  it  be  real,  it  involves  powers  which  con- 
stantly condition  experience  and  determine  its  forms 
and  results.  Nor  can  it  be  regarded  as  a  mere 
product  or  transfer  of  the  past  experiences  of  the 
race,  since  the  transmutation  of  one  conscious  per- 
sonal identity  into  another  is  inconceivable ;  and 
no  transfer  of  experiences  could  ever  produce  an 
experiencer.  To  say  that  this  is  idealism  may  re- 
mand the  statement  to  the  dictionary,  but  does  not 
refute  it. 

We  affirm,  however,  that  it  is  actual! sm  also. 
Processes  of  phenomena  come  to  us  as  forms  of 
knowledge ;  and  idea,  or  conception,  inevitably  de- 
termines form.  All  we  can  know  is  ideas,  —  yet 
not  as  unrealities ;  it  is  the  recognition  of  them  as 
reporting  objective  truth  that  makes  them,  for  us, 
knowledge.  Nor  can  knowledge  ever  be  anything 
else  than  this.  And  although  in  an  idea  there  are 
two  things,  —  the  subject  who  thinks  and  the  object 
thousfht, — the  two  are  one  in  that  common  sub- 
stance  of  mind  which  makes  them  what  they  are ; 
and  this  not  in  the  case  of  secondary  qualities  only, 
such  as  color  and  sound,  which  do  obviously  depend 
on  the  mental  relations  of  the  organism,  but  equally 
for  all  qualities  and  even  substances,  since  these  can 
address  us  only  in  the  language  of  mind.  As  Goethe 
says,  "  to  ascribe  everything  to  experience  is  to  for- 
get the  half  of  experience."  In  other  words,  no 
philosophy  of  human  knowledge  can  be  genuine 
which  leaves  out  man  himself,  or  the  unknown,  un- 
fathoined  continent  of  active  mind,  of  which  he  is  a 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  425 

living  portion.      Nor  can  the  results  of  such  omis- 
sion be  other  than  subversive. 

"  Were  not  the  eye  itself  a  sun,  no  sun  for  it  could  ever  shine : 
By  nothing   noble  could  the  heart  be  won,  were  not  the  heart  di- 
vine." 

Modern  materialism  makes  much  of  the  supposed 
distinction  between  "creating  everything  out  of  the 
subject "  (z.  e.,  the  thinking  mind),  and  "  letting 
things  speak  for  themselves."  ^  But  how  are  things 
to  speak  at  all  to  us,  except  through  the  nature  of 
mind?  No  bridge  to  reality  is  possible  that  does 
not  start  from  this.  And  the  bridge  being  granted, 
why  should  it  carry  over  our  cognitions  of  sensible 
particulars,  and  yet  refuse  passage  to  universal  con- 
ceptions and  principles  of  order,  which  are  the  direct 
and  necessary  forms  of  mental  action  ?  Does  the 
idea  of  cause,  for  instance,  depend  on  mind,  individ- 
ual or  general,  in  any  sense  which  should  destroy  its 
objective  value,  because  proceeding  from  us,  and  not 
from  •  nature  ?  By  the  same  logic,  the  things  to 
which  we  attach  it  are  under  equal  uncertainty,  since 
they  are  knowable  only  in  their  relations  with  our 
minds ;  and  their  succession,  which  the  Lockian 
would  put  in  place  of  Cause,  is  also  a  form  of  human 
conception  applied  to  things.  And  so  we  land  in 
a  phantom  world,  out  of  which  the  materialist  him- 
self who  leads  us  there  must  be  the  first  to  take 
the  back-track.  We  may  add  that  the  doctrine  that 
things  can  "  speak  to  us  for  themselves,"  without  re- 
gard to  mental  conditions,  is  not  only  the  metaphys- 
ical basis  of  such  dogmas  as  transubstantiation,  but 
a  practical  opening  for  intellectual  and  spiritual  des- 
potism in  every  form. 

^  See  Lange's  History  of  Materialism,  p.  213. 


426  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

But  these  primal  conditions  of  knowledge  are  not 
readily  observed.  Inevitably  assumed  in  all  mental 
processes,  they  are  not  to  be  demonstrated  ;  for  the 
very  act  of  demonstration  is  itself,  as  it  were,  let 
down  from  these  heavens,  and  by  invisible  threads. 
They  are  not  made  palpable,  like  numbers,  sensa- 
tions, observations,  by  strict  limits  of  their  own. 
They  are  as  subtle  and  indefinable  as  the}^  are  uni- 
versal. That  direct  conjunction  of  mind  with  the 
real  universe,  by  which  knowledge  is  made  possible, 
is  in  fact  a  natural  relation  to  the  infinite,  since  the 
universe  is  infinite  ;  and  thus  there  is  an  unsounded 
element,  a  mystic  margin,  implied  in  all  our  think- 
ing, —  a  something  beyond  warrant  from  experience, 
beyond  explanation  from  induction  or  observation, 
whereby  our  inferences  from  these  data  cover  indefi- 
nitely larger  ground  than  the  data  themselves.  And 
this  inevitable  law  of  mind  is  the  constant  guarantee 
that  prompts  to  progress  as  endless  resource  ;  that 
sense  of  moving  more  or  less  freely,  in  open  space, 
which  belongs  to  the  activity  of  reason.  On  this 
silent  and  boundless  atmosphere,  inviolable,  imper- 
turbable, not  to  be  demonstrated  or  analyzed  or  de- 
fined, but  known  in  our  inward  necessity  of  tran- 
scending experience  ;  on  this  universal  element,  where 
no  brazen  firmament  shuts  down  on  us,  and  whose 
stars  but  measure  an  ether  traversable  by  the  light 
of  mind ;  on  this  unseen,  indubitable  space,  symbo- 
lized in  the  cosmic  deep  around  our  senses,  all  hu- 
man aspiration  depends,  and  the  more  open  we  are 
to  the  sense  of  it,  the  larger  and  more  sublime  the 
world  of  possibility  appears.  Here  float  all  wings 
of  promise  and  belief.  Its  voice  haunts  us  with  a 
rune  that  was  never  wholly  silent  since  man  began 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  427 

to  know:  Thou  art  more  than  thy  limits  in  any 
premises,  past  or  present,  in  any  logic  of  the  eye 
and  ear.  Thou  art  not  made  of  senses  and  experi- 
ences ;  they  are  of  thee,  and  hint  that  larger  life  of 
Mind  which  thou  sharest  as  including,  transforming, 
overflowing  them,  —  the  greater  that  must  always 
explain  the  less. 

Locke's  system  was,  with  all  its  merits,  a  book 
of  the  Understanding.  It  skipped  all  mental  data 
which  could  not  be  readily  utilized  and  defined,  or 
left  them  in  a  state  of  helpless  vagueness.^  It  dis- 
paraged whatever  is  involved  in  our  relations  with 
the  infinite,  and  could  have  no  philosophy  of  beauty 
and  sublimity,  which  depend  on  these ;  none  of  en- 
thusiasm, loyalty,  love,  and  awe.  It  not  only  sub- 
ordinated the  universal  to  the  particular,  but  made 
the  idea  of  the  infinite  the  mere  product  of  limited 
sensuous  conditions,  at  the  same  time  slurring  it 
as  incomprehensible.^  A  practical  effect  of  this 
method  appeared  in  the  immense  influence  of  Eng- 
lish thought  on  the  French  mind  of  the  next  cen- 
tury.  Whatever  phraseology  of  universal  ideas  at- 
tended it,  the  social  dissolution  of  France  at  the 
close  of  this  epoch  showed  the  practical  absence  of 
any  philosophy  based  on  the  control  of  egotism  by 
reverent  culture  of  the  moral  ideal. 

Its  speculative  effect  led  the  same  way.  All 
knowledge  being  granted  as  coming  from  the  senses, 
what  do  you  know  of  these  at  all  except  through 
your  consciousness  ?  This  was  Berkeley's  inference 
of  the  "non-existence  of  matter."     And  then  comes 

1  See,  for  instance,  his  self-contradictory  discussion  of  the  claims 
of  reason  and  revelation  (Book  IV.  chap.  18). 

2  See  Book  II.  chap.  1 7. 


428  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

Hume's  trenchant  question :  "  How  do  we,  whose 
sense-testimony  is  so  plainly  uncertain,  know  any 
better  that  consciousness  tells  us  truth  ? "  What 
answer  could  be  made  to  that  question  by  those 
"whose  sole  test  of  truth  was  in  sensations,  and  to 
whom  inherent  laws  of  mind,  necessary  conditions 
of  all  experience  and  all  language,  and  essential  re- 
lations of  subject  to  object  in  all  thought,  were  too 
impalpable  to  be  studied  at  all?  Here  opens  a  gulf 
of  skepticism  as  to  the  very  power  of  seeing  truth, 
which  leaves  man  without  root  in  realities  ;  and  it 
inevitably  resulted  in  that  failure  of  earnestness  in 
ethics,  philosophy,  and  faith  which,  from  this  and 
other  causes,  characterized  literature  and  life  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  That  our  the- 
ories of  mind  lie  very  close  to  the  springs  of  charac- 
ter and  conduct  is  none  the  less  certain  in  the  long 
run,  because  it  would  be  unjust  to  infer  any  special 
virtues  or  vices  in  an  individual  from  his  philosoph- 
ical statements  or  religious  creed.  And  it  is  the  way 
in  which,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  we  treat  the 
demand  for  assurance  of  that  perception  of  substan- 
tial truth  which  is  un demonstrable  —  save  as  being 
the  indispensable  condition  of  earnest  thought  — 
that  enables  us  to  contribute  to  the  dignity  and  prog- 
ress of  mankind.  Our  philosophy,  being  the  way  in 
which  we  look  at  the  world,  is  what  we  really  live 
by,  and  goes  back  of  our  political  or  religious  rela- 
tions. 

But  a  philosophic  method  had  commenced  which 
recognized  these  higher  demands ;  not  new  in  sub- 
stance, of  course,  but  a  fresh  inspiration  of  faith  and 
science  to  meet  them.  From  Descartes  and  Spinoza 
it  descended  through  Leibnitz  and  Kant,  and  their 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  429 

later  interpreters,  Cousin  and  Jouffroy.  It  was  de- 
veloped in  various  forms  by  Schelling,  Hegel,  and 
the  higher  German  metaphysics,  and  formed  an  es- 
sential part  of  the  English  and  Scotch  philosophies 
of  Cudworth,  Reid,  and  Hamilton,  of  the  idealism  of 
Coleridge  and  the  moral  intensity  of  Carlyle.  Its 
past  and  present  representatives  are  of  no  special 
race,  and  show,  by  their  great  diversity  in  matters 
of  detail,  the  endless  adaptability  of  their  common 
method  and  the  wealth  of  its  resources.  This  method 
was  the  psychological,  as  the  other  was  the  "  sensa- 
tional," or  experiential.  It  began  at  the  nearest 
point,  exploring  that  productive  force  of  mind  which 
constructs  the  world  out  of  its  own  laws ;  itself  im- 
plied in  all  terms,  processes,  explanations,  verifica- 
tions, inductions,  as  their  common  substance,  which 
the  physicist  must  presuppose,  even  when  he  at- 
tempts to  find  its  beginning  among  the  plasmata  and 
cells,  if  plasma  and  cell  themselves  are  to  have  any 
meaning  for  him  ;  and  which  thus  constructs,  so  far 
as  they  can  be  known  to  him,  the  very  germs  which 
he  asserts  to  be  its  creator.  The  transcendental 
method  found  its  first  objective  point  in  the  uni- 
versal substance  of  mind,^  —  that  invisible  eye  and 
ear  implied  in  all  origins  conceivable  by  man  ;  with- 
out which  preadamitic  light  and  present  sounds  and 
colors  are  alike  meaningless  and  unreal.  "  Nothing 
in  the  mind  which  was  not  first  in  the  senses,"  was 
the  Lockian  statement.  "  Except  mind  itself,"  re- 
plied Leibnitz. 

1  The  question  of  self-conscious  mind  is  a  different  and  secondary 
one.  Even  in  our  personal  experience  some  of  the  noblest  instincts 
and  powers  seem  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  self-consciousness,  but 
to  be,  rather,  escapes  from  it  into  a  higher  quality  and  realm  of  mind. 
What  we  here  emphasize  is  mind  regarded  as  the  universal  substance 
of  knowledge. 


430  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

Analysis  of  thought  as  essential  and  primal  leads 
to  the  recognition  of  certain  ground-forms  of  thought 
as  universal,  and  therefore  as  known  only  by  tran- 
scending the  observation  of  facts  ;  since  no  number 
of  observations,  or  "  sensible  particulars,"  could  of 
themselves  ever  prove  a  universal  principle,  but  re- 
quire supplementing  by  larger  forces  of  mind.  Such 
ideas  as  Unity,  Universe,  Law,  Cause,  Duty,  Sub- 
stance (God),  Permanence  (Immortality),  are  thus 
affirmed  to  be  intuitively^  or  directly,  perceived  ;  be- 
cause, while  not  to  be  accounted  for  by  any  observed 
and  calculated  data,  they  are  yet  fundamental,  and 
must  be  referred  to  organic  relations  of  the  mind 
with  truth.  And  for  this  sense  the  term  intuition^ 
if  freed  from  loose  definition,  seems  to  be  a  very 
proper  one. 

Of  course  the  transcendentalist  cannot  mean  by  it 
that  at  all  times  and  by  all  persons  the  truths  now 
specified  are  seen  in  the  same  objective  form,  nor  even 
that  they  are  always  consciously  recognized  in  any 
form.  He  means  that,  being  involved  in  the  move- 
ment of  intelligence,  they  indicate  realities,  whether 
well  or  ill  conceived,  and  are  apprehended  in  pro- 
portion as  man  becomes  aware  of  his  own  mental 
processes.  They  who  deny  that  they  perceive  these 
ideas  intuitively  mean  the  more  or  less  questionable 
forms  of  them  which  at  the  moment  prevail.  Tran- 
scendentalism does  not  assert  that  these  last  are  in- 
tuitions. It  means  the  enduring  substance,  not  the 
transient  form.  What  we  are  to  regard  as  involved 
in  mental  movement  must  surely  be,  not  the  special 
modifications  dependent  on  individual  or  social  opin- 
ion, but  the  universal  root  ideas  to  which  all  these 
different  branches  point.    The  neglect  of  this  distinc- 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  431 

tion  between  the  necessary  conformities  of  mind  and 
the  special  inferences  that  have  been  built  upon  them 
has  caused  much  confused  discussion  on  the  subject 
of  intuition. 

By  intuition  of  God  we  do  not  mean  a  theological 
dogma  or  a  devout  sentiment ;  we  do  not  mean  be- 
lief in  "  a  God,"  Christian  or  other ;  but  that  pre- 
sumption of  the  infinite  as  involved  in  our  perception 
of  the  finite,  of  the  whole  as  implied  by  the  part,  of 
substance  behind  all  phenomena,  and  of  thought  as 
of  one  nature  with  its  object,  which  the  laws  of  mind 
require,  and  which  can  be  detected,  in  conscious  or 
unconscious  forms,  through  all  epochs  and  stages  of 
religious  belief.  The  intuition  of  law  does  not  de- 
pend on  the  opinion  that  this  or  that  order  of  events, 
because  oft  repeated,  must  be  taken  to  represent  a 
rule  of  nature  or  mind  :  it  consists  in  that  sense  of 
invariahility^  which  no  amount  of  such  repetitions 
can  explain,  since  they  only  afiirm  uniformity  so  far 
as  themselves  are  concerned.  Nor  is  any  particular 
succession  of  related  events  to  be  taken  as  measure 
or  test  of  the  intuition  of  cause ;  which  concerns 
the  universal  idea  of  causality,  inexplicable  by  any 
amount  of  successions,  and  meaning  production^  not 
succession  at  all.  Nor  is  every  affirmation  of  special 
duties  to  be  laid  to  the  account  of  intuition ;  which 
takes  cognizance  simply  of  duty  itself,  of  that  which 
makes  duties  possible,  —  the  meaning  of  Ought. 

An  intuitive  perception,  however  certain,  may  be 
of  slow  growth,  though  what  it  recognizes  is  in  fact 
a  necessary  part  of  mental  action.  In  like  manner, 
products  of  imperfect  experience  and  self-study  often 
claim  that  certitude  of  intuition,  as  such,  which  they 
do  not  really  represent.     We  do  not  rest  the  intui- 


432  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

tion  that  the  world  must  be  known  to  us  through 
universal  principles  on  the  truth  of  Plato's  archety- 
pal ideas  as  real  essences  in  the  hands  of  a  "  World- 
framer,"  nor  on  the  truth  of  modern  classification 
by  genera  and  species,  which  Agassiz  called  "  the 
thoughts  of  God."  Yet  these  were  forms,  however 
imperfect,  in  which  that  intuition  was  folded.  The 
uncertainty  of  many  common  beliefs  about  immor- 
tality has  led  many  to  deny  that  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  intuition  of  immortality.  It  is  not  easy  to 
see  how  we  can  have  intuitive  certainty  of  the  con- 
tinuance of  our  present  form  of  consciousness  in  a 
future  life  ;  still  less  of  what  awaits  it  in  a  future 
life.  But  it  is  certain  that  knowledge  involves  not 
only  a  sense  of  union  with  the  nature  of  that  which 
we  know,  but  a  real  participation  of  the  knowing 
faculty  therein.  When,  therefore,  I  have  learned 
to  conceive  truths,  principles,  ideas,  or  aims,  which 
transcend  life-times  and  own  no  physical  limits  to 
their  endurance,  the  aforesaid  law  of  mind  associates 
me  with  their  immortal  nature.  And  this  is  the 
indubitable  perception,  or  intuition,  of  permanent 
mind,  which  no  experience  of  impermanence  can 
nullify  and  no  Nirvana  excludes.  But  this  is  plainly 
incompetent  to  specific  knowledge  of  form  or  detail. 
And  so  we  attach  less  importance  to  definite  concep- 
tions or  images  of  a  future  life,  the  stronger  our 
sense  of  the  permanence  of  ideas,  the  unities  of  love, 
and  the  continuities  of  growth.  Imagination,  too, 
the  open  sense  of  our  highest  relations,  has  the  same 
secret  of  transcending  time.  The  beautiful  comes  to 
the  poet  at  once  as  reminiscence  and  prophecy,  and, 
lifted  in  the  heavens,  he  sings,  — 

"  I  look  on  the  Caucasus,  and  it  seems  to  me  as  if 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  433 

it  were  not  the  first  time  that  I  am  here ;  it  seems  as 
if  my  cradle  had  been  rocked  by  the  torrents  below 
me,  and  that  these  winds  have  lulled  me  to  sleep ; 
as  if  I  had  wandered  over  these  mountains  in  my 
childhood,  and  that  at  that  time  I  was  as  old  as  the 
world  of  God." 

But  such  foundations  as  these  are  not  intellect- 
ual merely ;  here  is  the  only  firm  ground  for  univer- 
sal convictions.  The  grand  words  "  I  ought "  refuse 
to  be  explained  by  dissolving  the  notion  of  right 
into  individual  calculation  of  consequences,  or  by  ex- 
pounding the  sense  of  duty  as  the  culminative  prod- 
uct of  observed  relations  of  succession.  Can  you 
measure  by  a  finite  quantity  the  amount  of  allegiance 
involved  in  that  sense  ?  Is  not  its  claim  universal 
and  absolute  ?  What  would  become  of  it,  if  it  pos- 
sessed no  authority  beyond  the  uncertain  foresight 
of  differing  minds  as  to  results,  a  soothsayer,  whose 
worth  depended  on  the  truth  of  his  special  predic- 
tions ?  A  criterion  in  special  duties  cannot  be  the 
basis  of  the  great  fact  of  duty,  nor  the  origin  of  an 
absolute  and  universal  allegiance.  How  explain  as 
a  "  greatest  happiness  principle,"  or  an  inherited 
product  of  observed  consequences,  that  sovereign 
and  eternal  law  of  mind  whose  imperial  edict  lifts 
all  calculations  and  measures  into  functions  of  an 
infinite  meaning  ?  And  how  vain  to  accredit  or  as- 
cribe to  revelation,  institution,  or  redemption  this 
necessary  allegiance  to  the  law  of  our  own  being, 
which  is  liberty  and  loyalty  in  one !  Yet  the  lan- 
guage of  even  liberal  Christian  sects  would  seem  to 
warrant  the  inference  that  it  was  imported  into 
the  human  soul  by  the  influence  or  example  of  Je- 
sus ! 

28 


434  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

*'  Two  things,"  said  Kant,  "  command  my  venera- 
tion :  the  starry  universe  around  me,  the  law  of  duty 
within."  Yet  neither  the  infinity  of  the  one  nor 
the  authority  of  the  other  can  be  demonstrated  by 
anything  but  the  fact  of  sight.  They  are  self-af- 
firmations of  mind  and  for  mind.  Kant  demanded 
that  ethics  should  not  rest  primarily  on  experimental 
grounds,  but  on  the  principle  of  morality,  which  is 
not  to  be  limited  or  explained  by  any  number  of 
exclusive  facts,  but  stands  upon  an  inherent  right  to 
the  implicit  confidence  of  men.  "  Everything  has 
either  price  or  dignity.  What  can  be  represented 
by  an  equivalent  has  price  ;  what  is  above  all  price 
has  dignity." 

What  Kant  did  for  speculative  ethics  Lessing  did 
for  theological  freedom.  It  was  his  working  out 
from  this  premise  of  the  transcendence  of  ideal  mind 
that  made  Lessing,  more  truly  than  any  other  man, 
father  of  our  modern  liberty  to  doubt.  "  Give  me, 
O  God,  not  truth  outright,  but  the  joy  of  striving 
for  truth,  even  though  I  never  reach  that  pure  light 
which  is  thine  alone."  No  grander  word  was  ever 
uttered.  All  the  free  thought  of  our  time  is  stir- 
ring in  it.  More  than  any  attainment  is  it  to  be  in 
earnest  to  attain ;  more  than  any  number  of  special 
truths  is  the  love  of  earning  truth,  the  life-task 
freely  taken.  Of  work  and  play  this  is  the  tran- 
scendental ground.  For  of  such  rights  of  mind  what 
demonstration  is  possible  ?  What  induction  proves 
them  ?  'T  is  the  open  eye  itself  shining  with  the 
very  light  it  sees.  Liberty  to  doubt !  If  we  are 
products  of  our  sensations,  what  right  or  power 
should  we  have  to  doubt  ?  But,  if  we  can  doubt  all 
doctrines,  so  long  as  we  love  the  earning  of  truth, 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  435 

what  shall  explain  this  bat  participation  in  the  in- 
finitude of  truth?  Once  more:  Spinoza,  following 
this  track  of  transcendent  thought  to  its  universal 
form ;  assuming,  in  the  serene  assurance  with  which 
he  moves  in  the  pure  idea  of  God,  that  the  percep- 
tion and  participation  of  the  Infinite  is  real,  and  that 
philosophy 'is  thus  identical  with  religion  ;  resolving 
all  being  into  One  Substance  on  the  sole  authority 
of  thought,  affirms  it  as  man's  real  life  to  know,  to 
obey,  to  love,  and,  so  far,  to  become  God. 

These  three  leaders  of  modern  thought  indicate  in 
their  various  ways  the  upward  drift  of  the  transcen- 
dental method.  How,  indeed,  should  the  study  of 
mind  in  its  inherent  productive  force  fail  to  open 
those  paths  of  thought  which  New  England  tran- 
scendentalists  used  to  call  man's  "  inlets  to  the  Infi- 
nite"? Of  such  intuition,  the  contents,  though  not 
to  be  proved,  are  none  the  less  truly  knowledge  ;  be- 
cause they  are  assumed  in  all  processes  of  verifica- 
tion, and  because  the  infinite  is  as  real  as  the  finite 
and  as  really  known,  —  being  simply  that  spatial 
freedom  and  undefined  possibility  which  are  as  es- 
sential to  our  minds  as  cosmic  space  to  stars. 

Our  method  of  intellectual  inquiry  involves,  there- 
fore, the  highest  interests  of  ethics,  philosophy,  and 
faith.  In  the  unity  of  these  three  forces  centres  the 
movement  of  our  time.  Everywhere  it  insists  on 
making  this  unity  real,  not  only  as  direct  vision  of 
the  laws  of  the  world,  but  as  ideal  of  personal  char- 
acter. This,  in  short,  is  its  Religion.  Thus  its 
"  Way  towards  the  Blessed  Life  "  is  conceived  by 
Fichte  as  free  obedience  to  immutable  laws,  discerned 
by  the  individual  to  be  at  once  his  own  inmost  sub- 
stance and  the  order  of  the  worlds,  with  Avhich  he  be- 


486  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

comes  at  one  by  escape  from  selfish  individualism  into 
the  personal  ideal,  —  a  system  wrongly  called  ego- 
ism; the  ego  being  only  the  starting-point  of  con- 
sciousness in  our  personal  sense  of  the  true  and  the 
holy,  opening  the  way  to  universal  truths  and  du- 
ties. The  intellectual  method  of  our  time  is  rooted 
in  such  intuition  of  the  identity  of  mind  with  the  sub- 
stance of  that  world  which  it  perceives.  The  same 
principle  has  given  metaphysics  its  basis  for  knowl- 
edge in  the  identity  of  subject  and  object,  and  cul- 
ture its  belief  that  every  aspiration  is  the  human 
side  of  a  Divine  necessity.  It  has  taught  ethics  that 
self-respect  is  one  with  the  sovereignty  of  law.  It 
has  revealed  to  sympathy  the  solidarity  of  the  race, 
which  simply  means  that  humanity  without  and 
heart  within  have  one  substance  and  aim.  And  so  it 
has  inspired,  in  Europe  and  America,  those  univer- 
salities which  we  now  express  by  the  words  People, 
Labor,  Liberty ;  ideas  in  place  of  traditional  con- 
ventionalities and  vested  fictions,  as  the  motive  pow- 
ers of  society  ;  a  divinity  within  the  life  of  man,  not 
outside  of  it. 

So  with  our  spiritual  philosophy.  That  the  soul 
can  give  true  report  of  the  universe,  as  of  that 
which  is  of  the  same  nature  and  purport  with  its 
own  faculties,  enters  in  various  forms  into  all  that 
religious  thought  which  we  call  "  radical."  For  this 
word,  root-thought^  there  is  no  other  proper  meaning 
than  the  recognition  that  human  faculty  is  related 
to  truth,  not  by  secondary  adaptation  or  artificial 
conjunction,  but  by  a  natural  unity.  This  partici- 
pation in  the  substance  of  what  we  know  abolishes 
those  imagined  clefts  between  God,  Nature,  and 
Man  which  Christian  theology  has  helplessly  tried  to 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  437 

bridge  over  by  its  equally  imaginary  raeclianisra  of 
miracle  and  incarnation.  And,  finally,  to  this  self- 
recognition  of  the  mind  in  its  object  is  due  the  fear- 
lessness that  now  animates  science  and  scatters 
superstition  with  a  self-confidence  that  no  mere  in- 
duction can  explain.  Thus,  in  Tyndall's  fine  state- 
ment, mind  is  evolved,  not  out  of  mere  inorganic 
matter,  but  from  the  universe  as  a  whole.  This 
whole,  however,  is  infinite,  and  involves  inscrutable 
Substance,  which,  as  recognizable  only  by  mind,  is 
therefore  of  one  nature  therewith.  The  lowest  phys- 
ical beginnings  are  thus,  in  virtue  of  the  cosmic  force 
by  which  they  exist,  actual  mentalities,  or  mental 
germs.  The  crude  definition  of  evolution  as  pro- 
duction of  the  highest  by  inherent  force  of  the  low- 
est is  here  supplanted  by  one  which  recognizes  mate- 
rial parentage  as  itself  involving,  even  in  its  lowest 
stages,  the  entire  cosmic  consensus^  of  whose  un- 
known force  mind  is  the  highest  known  exponent. 
Even  when  apparent  as  final  fruit  of  evolution,  con- 
scious mind  is  therefore,  we  conceive,  not  a  new 
force  in  the  universe,  but  the  substance  of  the  uni- 
verse itself  under  the  form  of  individual  relations  and 
growth,  —  an  identity  which  is  seen  in  its  capacity, 
and  even  necessity,  to  open  out  from  individualism 
into  universal  truth  as  its  natural  home. 

We  must,  then,  enter  our  protest  against  the 
treatment  of  this  philosophy  as  the  opinion  of  a 
small  school  of  thinkers,  or  as  a  transient  phase  of 
idealism,  in  due  time  supplanted  by  positive  science. 
It  purports  to  be  the  rationale  of  human  thinking ; 
its  method  is  as  organic  as  induction  or  association 
of  ideas.  Its  postulates  are  involved  in  these  pro- 
cesses, and  make  them  effective.     If  true  once,  it  is 


438  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

true  forever.  Conscious  recognition  of  the  laws  of 
mental  method  is  something  else  than  an  ism.  If 
we  call  it  Transcendentalism,  we  do  not  forget  that  it 
is  also  realism,  as  affirming  objective  realities  and 
grounds  of  actual  life  and  work.  We  believe  it  to 
be  the  organic  basis  of  progress ;  of  every  step  be- 
yond traditional  limits;  of  all  ideal  faith  and  pur- 
pose. For  these,  in  their  refusal  to  be  judged  by 
the  dicta  of  experience,  or  by  the  strict  definitions  of 
the  understanding,  are  exponents  of  an  infinite  rela- 
tion in  the  human  ideal.  The  step  beyond  experi- 
ence is  the  common  bond  of  all  upward  movements, 
intellectual,  moral,  spiritual,  aesthetic. 

This  step  is  involved  in  the  growth  of  true  per- 
sonality. Once  discern  that  your  experience  through 
the  senses  is  not  adequate  to  account  for  your  con- 
ception of  the  world  ;  once  mark  how  you  transform 
such  experience  by  laws  of  your  own  mind  and  of  all 
mind,  and  the  free  creative  function  of  your  being 
is  revealed.  And  so  this  perception  of  a  force  within 
us  which  posits  itself  over  against  the  limits  of  experi- 
ence, as  its  master,  is  what  delivers  individual  mind 
from  outward  authority  into  free  reason.  Ask  a 
dozen  men  to  think  of  an  external  object,  say  a  tree  : 
they  all  turn  in  one  direction,  and  a  supposed  common 
sensation  disguises  their  individuality.  But  ask  them 
to  look  at  the  mental  process  by  which  they  know 
the  tree,  and  each  finds  that  the  primal  source  of  his 
perception  is  internal ;  and  the  inference  follows  that 
its  value  must  depend  on  his  personal  dignity  and 
freedom.  I  do  not  mean  that  personal  character  is 
merely  an  intellectual  process.  But  it  is  impossible 
that  one  should,  in  any  living  sense,  realize  that  he 
is  not  a  mere  member  of  a  mass,  or  product  of  insti- 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  439 

tutions,  but  a  piece  of  primal  fact  and  original  na- 
ture, unless  he  is  guarded  and  consecrated  by  a  sense 
of  the  law  by  which  he  is  inwardly  related  to  truth. 
Then  begins  high  moral  culture ;  then  that  earnest 
dealing  with  necessity,  duty,  opportunity,  which  sets 
the  great  tasks,  and  lifts  the  life  through  the  aim  it 
serves.  Knowing  her  own  solitude  and  self-depend- 
ence, the  soul  finds  at  once  commandment  and  free- 
dom in  the  realities  that  front  her.  Self-isolation 
is  the  first  step  to  self-consecration.  "Gentlemen," 
began  Fichte,  in  his  opening  lecture  on  philosophy, 
"  give  me  your  closest  attention.  Let  each  of  you 
think  this  book.  Now  let  each  think,  not  the  book, 
but  himself.'''*  Such  his  first 'summons  to  the  noble 
study  of  what  Kant  called  the  "  autonomy  of  the 
will,"  none  the  less  real  for  the  laws  of  necessity 
with  which  it  has  to  deal. 

It  is  by  force  of  the  transcendental  element  in  hu- 
man thought  that  there  was  never  wanting  some 
measure  of  healthful  reaction  from  drag-weights  of 
the  past,  of  self-recovery  from  selfish  interests  of  the 
present.  How  could  the  constant  operation  of  a  law 
of  the  mind  which  overflows  all  data  of  experience 
with  ideas  whose  scope  they  cannot  explain  fail  to 
make  prophets  in  every  age,  —  yea,  more  or  less  of 
a  prophet  in  every  thoughtful  person  ?  This  is  the 
resilient  force  that  throws  off  effete  organized  prod- 
uct, supplants  waste  by  repair,  adds  fresh  atoms 
for  an  unprecedented  life ;  this  the  unexplained  ele- 
ment, the  mystic  impulsion,  in  all  growth.  The 
transcendental  law  becomes  impulse  and  aspiration. 
Stirred  by  its  ceaseless  presence,  men  listen  to  the 
native  affirmations  of  Mind  :  I  am  knowledge,  and 
the  medium  of  knowledge ;  I  am  inspiration  as  well 


440  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

as  tradition  ;  the  instant  fire,  as  well  as  the  inherited 
fuel,  of  thought ;  primal  as  well  as  resultant ;  infinite 
as  well  as  finite.  Hence  that  eternal  dissatisfaction 
of  idealists  with  the  superficial  doings  around  them, 
—  with  the  eager  fret  and  self-waste,  the  paltry  prop- 
agandism  of  book,  church,  sect ;  their  exacting  de- 
mand on  human  nature,  which  makes  them,  as  Em- 
erson said,  ''  strike  work,  in  order  to  act  freely  for 
something  worthy  to  be  done."  Whoso  scoffs  at 
their  refusal  to  do  special  things  that  may  seem  to 
him  imperative  may  well  consider  whether,  after  all, 
the  best  doing  is  not  being.  Let  him  not  call  it  un- 
social. What  society  most  wants  is  criticism  by  the 
courage  to  choose  what  one  respects,  and  to  renounce 
and  reprove  what  this  disdains.  We  reach  civility 
when  men  recognize  that  one  in  earnest  to  be  doing 
his  proper  work  is  more  likely  to  know  what  this  is 
than  ten  thousand  other  persons  who  would  set  him 
upon  theirs.  The  transcendental  impulse  accounts 
not  for  dissatisfied  protest  only.  It  is  the  basis  of 
interpretations  of  life  and  duty  by  ideal  standards ; 
of  the  spiritual  imagination,  which  forever  confutes, 
by  its  far-seeing  faith,  the  gloom  and  irony  in  man's 
actual  experience. 

A  constant  in  histor}^,  it  makes  the  "  one  increas- 
ing purpose  that  through  the  ages  runs."  In  India, 
Transcendentalism  took  sensualizing  tropic  fires  for 
its  leverage,  and  there  appeared  a  philosophy  that 
treated  the  senses  as  illusion,  and  an  enthusiasm  of 
brotherhood  which  gathered  a  third  of  mankind  into 
its  fold.  In  Persia  and  Egypt,  it  transfigured  all 
great  natural  forms  with  inner  meaning  beyond  sen- 
suous traditions  and  rituals,  drawn  from  the  vicis- 
situdes  and   aspirations   of   the  soul.      God,  Duty, 


TRANSCENDEXTALISM.  441 

Immortality,  —  affirmations  of  the  infinite  in  man, 
through  all  special  errors,  —  became  the  substance 
of  "  mysteries  "  and  awe-girded  disciplines,  wherein 
the  noblest  minds  of  antiquity  learned  divine  phi- 
losophies and  tasks.  In  Greece,  when  the  word-play 
of  sensational  logic  was  destroying  certitude  in 
morals  and  mind,  Socrates  affirmed  personality  the 
measure  of  all  studies,  and  brought  its  intuition  of 
the  Good,  the  True,  and  the  Becoming  to  silence 
noisy  pretension  and  confute  moral  unbelief.  Not- 
withstanding the  sophist's  measure  of  all  beliefs  by 
individual  opinion,  what  men  really  needed  in  Athens 
was  to  be  disengaged  from  the  crowd,  to  front  their 
own  consciousness  of  reality.  The  Socrates  elenchiis, 
or  confuting  process,  was  no  mere  bit  of  argumenta- 
tion, but,  as  its  author  himself  described  it,  ''  spir- 
itual obstetrics,"  opening  to  each  mind  its  own  pro- 
ductive force.  His  ''  dcemon,^^  who  was  wont  to  warn 
him,  without  giving  any  reason,  against  doing  this  or 
that  thing,  was  manifestly  the  self-protective  law  of 
a  personality  that  knew  its  own  right  to  shape  cir- 
cumstance and  to  reject  interference  with  its  ideal. 
Thence  came  harvests  for  all  ages  in  Plato's  evolu- 
tion of  his  text  that  the  Ideal  is  the  Real  ;  that 
principles,  seen  directly  by  the  soul  that  has  found 
its  real  self,  are  the  substance  of  the  world.  Our 
chief  debt  to  Greece  is  summed  up  in  this :  that 
Socrates  and  Plato  saw  the  world  as  outgrowth  of 
mind,  —  mind  as  its  own  authority,  and  personal 
mind  as  organically  related  to  universal  being. 

In  Judfea,  the  reaction  against  materialism  was 
more  intensely  moral,  —  authoritative  protest  of 
prophet,  social  exodus  of  Essene,  apocalyptic  vision, 
wilderness   cry.     Yet   the   free   transcendental  phi- 


442  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

losophy  may  be  read  as  plainly  in  writings  of  the 
Apocrypha,  dating  before  the  time  of  Jesus,  as  in 
Goethe,  or  Carlyle,  or  Emerson,  or  Parker.  In  John 
the  Baptist  came  Hebrew  summons  to  the  personal 
ideal,  and  Jesus  went  behind  Pharisee  ritualism, 
Sadducee  skepticism,  and  Essene  asceticism,  —  final- 
ities of  Hebrew  experience,  —  to  the  soul  that  makes 
experience.  To  the  transcendental  impulse  the  ages 
owe  his  resort  to  self-sovereignty,  his  rejection  of 
the  dominant  sources  of  national  hope,  his  enthusi- 
asm of  faith  in  the  unseen,  his  appeal  to  humanity 
and  to  pure  ethics  against  force  and  formalism,  his 
assertion  of  infinite  relations.  That  lofty  manhood, 
though  swayed  by  Hebrew  conditions,  by  supernat- 
uralism,  by  the  monarchical  principle  of  Hebrew 
piety,  by  its  Messianic  idea  and  the  traditional  habit 
of  claiming  special  divine  commission,  by  that  ex- 
cessive reaction  to  despair  of  the  present  world  which 
was  incident  to  the  times,  was  yet  so  offensive  to 
Jewish  experience  that  martyrdom  was  the  cost  of 
it.  But  the  impulse  of  humanity  that  presses  be- 
yond experience  is  greater  than  any  of  its  own  hu- 
man products,  and  so  it  passed  the  limitations  of 
Jesus  to  fresh  material  in  other  races  and  times. 
The  democratic  movement  of  that  age,  the  grand 
Stoic  and  Epicurean  forms  of  self-respect  and  faith 
in  nature,  the  coalescence  of  beliefs  to  higher  unities, 
did  not  lose  their  power  of  transfusing  ages  of  Chris- 
tian ecclesiasticism  with  a  redeeming  instinct  of  uni- 
versality. 

Christianity  inherited  the  monarchical  idea  of  a 
God  separate  from  man,  and  a  contempt  for  natural 
law  and  human  faculty  which  crippled  its  faith  in 
the  spiritual  and  moral  ideal.     It  became  more  and 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  443 

more  a  materialism  of  miracle,  Bible,  Church.  Even 
its  essay  to  realize  immanent  Deity  yielded  a  more 
or  less  exclusive  mediatorial  God-man  ;  and  it  treated 
personality  as  the  mere  consequence  of  one  prescrip- 
tive historical  force,  just  as  philosophical  materialism 
treats  it  as  mere  product  of  sensations.  What  suc- 
cessions of  oppressive  creeds  and  barbarous  wars  con- 
cerning the  nature  of  Christ ;  what  lasting  reigns 
of  terror  and  superstition ;  what  persistent  bigotries 
restrained,  not  by  creed,  but  only  by  the  political 
balance  of  power;  what  hostility  to  the  steps  of  sci- 
ence, in  crude,  perverted  forms  of  ideal  desire,  have 
given  way  to  the  patient  pressure  of  an  organic  ne- 
cessity behind  them  all,  the  transcendental  sense  of 
invariable  law  I  Against  what  reluctant  traditions 
of  experience  it  urges  its  way  !  In  the  Reformation 
it  seemed  to  thrust  its  keen  edge  through  the  old 
materialism  to  the  free  light.  "  What  makes  man's 
world  is  not  without  him,  but  within:  not  works, 
then,  but  faith,  not  doing,  but  being,  saves."  Chris- 
tianity was  broken  into  individualities.  But  they 
proved  chips  of  the  papal  block.  Protestantism 
swelled  with  the  old  leaven  of  ecclesiasticism.  Mira- 
cle, Bible,  Church,  Sabbath,  external  God,  and  of- 
ficial Atonement  survived  in  a  supernaturalism  of 
which  spiritual  ideals  were  regarded  as  the  secretion, 
just  as  materialism  holds  mind  to  be  a  function  of 
the  bodily  organs. 

Puritanism  was  a  further  protest  than  Protestant- 
ism against  institutional  experience.  It  was  full  of 
crudities ;  a  pungent  mixture  of  noble  insights  with 
gross  superstitions,  of  transcendental  day  with  tradi- 
tional night ;  an  uncouth  Titan,  precursor  of  an  in- 
telligence and  order  hitherto  unknown.     Supersti- 


444  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

tion  so  ran  in  the  grain  of  it  that,  after  two  centuries 
and  a  half  of  American  air  and  space,  its  mediaeval 
spirit  brought  ministers  together  to  stop  access  of 
the  people  to  free  reading  on  Sunday,  "  because  God 
has  given  his  Bible  for  that  day,  and  religion  will 
perish  without  morality."  The  real  transcendental- 
ists  of  the  seventeenth  century  were  the  Mayflower 
Pilgrims ;  for  America,  the  Rock  of  Ages  was  Plym- 
outh Rock.  The  moral  earnestness  of  the  pilgrims 
was  a  step  in  conscience,  precisely  like  Kant's  in 
philosophy,  when  he  showed  the  sensationalists  the 
mind-element  they  had  left  out  of  their  analysis,  and 
led  the  way  through  Atlantic  deeps  of  consciousness 
which  they  had  not  dared  explore.  Did  experience 
create  either  of  these  great  unaided  ventures  upon 
unknown  seas  ?  The  Plymouth  pilgrim  outstepped 
the  intolerance  of  the  Puritan  creed.  He  followed 
his  undemonstrated  vision  of  a  free  private  judgment 
out  of  church,  home,  and  civilization  itself.  But  he 
carried  civilization  with  him  in  that  step  of  intui- 
tion ;  he  took  up  the  wintry  leagues  of  the  Atlantic, 
and  made  them  shining  steps  to  the  people's  throne. 
Well  might  the  ideality  that  refused  to  be  the  prod- 
uct of  traditions  transfigure  forever  that  desert  con- 
tinent and  howling  sea  for  which  it  exchanged  them. 
These  spaces  were  there  to  show  that  man  makes  of 
his  experiences  more  than  experience  by  the  lift  of 
his  spiritual  force.  Mark  close  to  this  group  the  im- 
perial man  of  that  day,  who  refused  to  persecute  for 
belief  in  any  form,  and  denounced  usurpation  even 
in  the  slayers  of  a  tyrant.  "  The  Lord  deliver  us 
from  Sir  Harry  Vane  !  "  cried  Cromwell,  covering  his 
face  with  his  hands,  when  the  clear  eyes  that  never 
quailed  before  plot  or  power  searched  his  own,  — 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  445 

eyes  of  a  great  conscience  conversant  with  the  in- 
finite laws,  and  serenely  awaiting  martyrdom,  that 
could  transfigure  with  trust  the  total  eclipse  of  pa- 
triot harvests  and  hopes.  Hear  that  frightened  bray 
of  trumpets  trying  to  drown  what  such  a  man  might 
dare  to  say  on  the  scaffold,  —  a  fine  expedient,  on 
the  theory  that  mind  is  the  product  of  things !  With 
what  divine  irony  the  transcendental  genius  of  mod- 
ern liberty  meets  this  pretense  of  mass-power  to 
abolish  men  because  it  is  so  very  easy  to  abolish  the 
visible  shapes  of  men,  —  Algernon  Sidney  and  Harry 
Vane  at  the  beginning  of  one  epoch,  John  Brown  at 
the  threshold  of  another,  dying  on  scaffolds  as  fanat- 
ics, to  ascend  as  ideal  symbols  of  power !  The  char- 
ter of  the  Republic  is  itself  an  assumption  that  unde- 
monstrated  ideas  are  masters  of  the  social  elements. 
For  ideas  were  not  demonstrated,  are  not  demon- 
strable. No  data  of  observation  can  express  their 
universal  meaning.  The  data  are  their  negations,  not 
their  cause ;  and  suggest  them,  as  the  finite  suggests 
the  infinite,  by  contrast  and  insufficiency.  What  else 
can  we  say  of  ideas  than  that  they  are  the  wondrous 
intimacies  of  the  human  soul  with  the  Infinite  and 
Eternal,  its  contacts  with  universal  forces,  its  pro- 
phetic ventures  and  master  steps  beyond  any  past  ? 
Yet  John  Stuart  Mill  fancied  that  Transcendentalism 
stands  in  the  way  of  progress.  Is  there  offense  to 
science  in  our  dealing  with  ideas,  because  ideas  are 
inscrutable  to  the  understanding  ?  Let  such  science 
explain  any  one  thing  in  nature  or  man,  with  which 
itself  claims  to  deal,  and  we  will  lay  to  heart  these 
complaints  against  the  ideal. 

Justice,  Humanity,  Universal  Rights  and  Duties, 
on  which  progress  moves,  are  transcendental.     The 


446  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

idea  of  a  unity  of  races  and  of  religions  ;  the  idea  of 
a  true  State,  combining  personal  with  public  freedom  ; 
the  idea  of  the  Abolitionist,  that  went  behind  parties 
and  fundamental  laws,  and  put  a  soul  into  a  dead 
republic  ;  the  idea  of  equal  opportunities  for  race 
and  sex,  are  all  transcendental.  So  is  philosophy, 
as  a  science  of  independent  principles,  based  on  the 
necessities  of  thought.  What  series  of  actual  facts  is 
represented  by  the  philosophy*  of  history,  which  as- 
sumes to  judge  the  steps  of  the  past,  and  interprets 
them  to  high  uses  of  which  they  had  no  presenti- 
ment ?  Art  is  transcendental,  realm  of  refuge  from 
the  woes  and  imperfections  of  the  actual,  —  art,  the 
infinite  hearing  of  a  deaf  Beethoven,  the  celestial 
vision  of  a  blind  ]\Iilton,  a  Michael  Angelo's  cry  for 
liberty  from  the  stones  of  the  quarry,  in  an  age  when 
the  tongues  of  men  were  forced  to  be  dumb.  Mo- 
rality is  transcendental,  turning  fate  to  freedom  and 
limits  to  liberties  by  choosing  to  accept  and  abide 
them.  Transcendental,  too,  is  a  philosophy  of  life 
which  can  offset  the  limits  of  the  understanding  by 
such  entire  trust  in  whatever  shall  prove  to  be  spirit- 
ual law  and  natural  destiny  as  needs  no  guarantee 
from  details,  and  exacts  no  promises  from  the  wise 
sovereignty  of  our  own  nature.  This,  which  is  as 
truly  reason  as  it  is  faith,  I  find  to  be  the  best  form 
of  religion.  "  Take  philosophy  out  of  life,"  says  Max- 
imus  Tyrius,  "  and  you  lose  the  power  to  pray ; " 
which  is  certainly  true,  if  there  is  no  real  prayer 
but  a  free  aspiration  based  on  the  assumption  of  ideal 
good.  How  indispensable  is  this  wide  mystic  opening 
and  margin  for  all  thought  appears  in  the  life  of  that 
chief  opponent  of  intuition  in  our  time,  John  Stuart 
Mill.   Absorbed  from  his  childhood  in  habits  of  logical 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  447 

analysis  and  utilitarian  calculation,  which  excluded 
the  sense  of  infinity,  he  naturally  enough  fell  at  last 
into  the  dismal  conviction  that  all  aims,  being  log- 
ically exhaustible,  were  therefore  worthless,  and  was 
saved  from  despair  only  by  betaking  himself,  under 
logical  protest,  to  the  transcendental  imagination  of 
Wordsworth  and  the  prophetic  moral  sentiment  of 
Carlyle.  Nor  was  this  all.  Even  against  himself,  he 
proves  to  have  been  a  prince  of  idealists,  not  only  in 
his  socialist  enthusiasm  and  his  zeal  for  an  intellect- 
ual liberty  never  yet  achieved,  but  in  his  estimates 
of  two  persons  with  whom  he  was  in  closest  inti- 
mac\% — his  father  and  his  wife.  So  the  materialism 
of  Harriet  Martineau,  thorough  as  it  seems,  did  not 
prevent  her  from  bearing  witness  that  the  awe  of 
infinity  sanctified  her  study  and  her  dream.^ 

And  all  these  things  are  transcendental  for  the 
same  reason  that  the  doctrine  of  intuition  as  held  by 
any  school,  in  old  or  new  time,  is  transcendental : 
namely,  as  recognition  of  the  inevitable  step  beyond 
experience  or  observation  by  which  man  lives  and 
grows.  According  to  the  intensity  of  this  recogni- 
tion, the  law  may  work  in  one  as  conscious  philo- 
sophical method,  in  another  as  enthusiasm  for  prog- 
ress, beauty,  or  good.  The  basis  is  always  the  same, 
—  an  organic  element  of  mind,  which  may  be  per- 
verted, neglected,  ignored,  but  which  holds  in  some 
form  while  sanity  endures.  It  is  assumed  in  every 
process  of  induction,  and  makes  the  particular  pre- 
mise justify  a  general  conclusion.  It  is  involved  in 
all  deductive  reasoning,  and  makes  the  fact  deduced 
a  mere  fresh  item  under  an  assumed  law  that  gives 
it  all  its  value.     It  is  the  necessity  of  the  materialist 

1  Autobiography,  vol.  ii.  p.  91. 


448  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

himself,  who  forsakes  his  principle  of  sense-deriva- 
tion as  soon  as  he  reaches  the  crucial  point  of  his 
theory  of  nature.  Thus  Lucretius,  the  representative 
materialist  of  the  ancient  world,  explains  the  order 
of  the  universe  as  one  among  innumerable  arrange- 
ments possible  to  atoms  moving  without  intelligence, 
—  an  idea  for  which  there  is  no  more  authority  in 
the  senses  than  for  any  conception  ever  forced  on 
them  by  the  mind  of  man.  Even  Lange,  with  all 
his  hatred  of  Platonic  Realism  and  his  strong  denial 
of  any  source  of  knowledge  but  the  senses,  actu- 
ally allows  that  "  the  tendency  to  the  supersensuous 
helped  to  open  the  laws  of  the  world  on  the  path 
of  abstractions,"  and  that  "  the  ideal  element  stands 
in  closest  connection  with  inventions  and  discover- 
ies." 1 

If,  then,  every  one  is  a  transcendentalist,  whether 
he  knows  it  or  not,  what,  it  will  be  asked,  is  the  prac- 
tical worth  of  the  discussion  ?  The  same,  we  reply, 
which  belongs  to  every  question  of  truth  or  error. 
Delusion  is  not  more  common  than  it  is  harmful. 
Yet  it  always  consists  in  mistaking  or  denying  the 
very  laws  which  are  all  the  while  shaping  us  by 
their  mercies  and  holding  us  to  their  penalties.  Pa- 
pist and  radical  alike  reach  their  beliefs  through  acts 
of  choice  dependent  on  their  respective  mental  states  ; 
yet  ignorance  of  this  inevitable  necessity  is  none  the 
less  truly  the  ground  of  the  vast  difference  between 
belief  in  Freedom  and  belief  in  Outward  Authority, 
and  of  the  momentous  consequences  that  result  from 
it.  Even  if  the  transcendental  method  were  accepted 
of  all  men  as  the  true  one,  yet,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
point  of  moment  is  the  emphasis  laid  on  it,  the  ear- 

1  History  of  Materialism,  pp.  121,  122. 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  449 

nestness  and  ardor  of  the  acceptance,  the  force  of 
purpose  with  which  it  is  applied  to  life.  Its  value  is 
in  determining  our  philosophy  of  culture,  as  well  as 
in  reporting  a  necessary  law  of  mind. 

.  What,  finally,  is  its  relation  to  science  ?  The  idea 
of  law  universal  and  invariable  is  purely  transcen- 
dental. No  number  of  experiences  could  have  told 
us  what  must  of  necessity  be ;  no  piling  of  instances 
could  ever  have  proved  that,  always  and  everywhere, 
like  causes  must  bring  like  effects.  It  is  a  step  be- 
yond phenomena,  beyond  authority  from  experience, 
—  a  step  of  the  same  significance  for  philosophy,  if 
not  of  the  same  courage,  as  that  of  the  Plymouth 
Pilgrim  ;  but  taken  in  the  private  mind,  in  the  quiet 
of  natural  growth,  unconsciously,  long  before  it  is 
apprehended.  That  such  steps  are  but  the  results 
of  the  inherited  experience  of  mankind,  who  have 
always  employed  these  processes,  is  therefore  unten- 
able, since  the  transcending  of  sensation  is  in  every 
instance  a  personal  act,  and  implies  that  the  power 
of  mind  to  perform  it  is  as  instant  and  fresh  in  the 
latest  man  as  in  the  first.  What  a  moment  of  joy 
and  light,  remembered  forever,  is  that  when  first  the 
idea  of  universal  law  breaks  on  the  consciousness  of 
a  youth,  and  he  marks  it  as  the  imperishable  relation 
of  his  mind  to  knowledge  !  Well  may  it  move  him. 
With  that  perception  culture  begins.  It  opens  the 
whole  past  and  the  whole  future  ;  it  participates  in 
the  infinite ;  it  revolutionizes  belief ;  it  recognizes 
what  must  condition  and  shape  all  experience.  On 
this  intuition  the  sciences  rest ;  by  this  they  live  and 
move  and  have  their  being  ;  and  every  step  they 
take,  now  in  this  day  of  their  triumph,  this  glad 
tread  of  man  that  goes  to  the  centre  of  the  world, 
29 


450  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

has  a  transcendental  sanction.  Clearer  and  fuller 
comes  the  sense  of  its  meaning  through  their  evp- 
lution,  till  it  emancipates  religion  from  exceptional 
and  external  masters,  substitutes  social  science  for 
supernaturalism  as  practical  redeemer  of  man,  in- 
cessantly reforms  tradition  and  recasts  institutions, 
changes  rights  of  private  judgment  into  universal 
duties,  lifts  the  spiritual  ideal  beyond  forms  and 
names,  and  will  counteract  thing-service  in  physics, 
politics,  and  trade  by  its  reach  after  the  ideal  and 
infinite,  after  undemonstrated  truth  and  good.  This 
is  the  undertow  that  bears  all  surface-currents  along 
its  own  masterful  way.  I  fear  no  scheme  of  evangel- 
icalism to  give  over  the  State  to  a  Church  of  Miracle 
in  an  age  so  possessed  by  the  vision  of  universal  law. 
Nor  do  I  fear  that  scientific  criticism  will  be  stayed 
by  all  that  the  arsenals  of  superstition  can  bring  to 
bear  against  Tyndall's  prayer  gauge  or  Darwin's  evo- 
lution. Science  can  be  harmed  only  by  denying  its 
own  constant  dependence  on  an  unseen,  ideal  princi- 
ple, authenticated  by  intuition  alone. 

A  war  upon  the  transcendental  method,  then, 
would  simply  divorce  science  from  that  sense  of  the 
unlimited  and  universal  which  is  its  own  motive 
force.  Science  seeks  to  define,  to  analyze,  to  make 
comprehensible,  to  show  the  order  and  relations  of 
phenomena,  to  unfold  the  chain  of  evolution  from 
lowest  matter  to  highest  mind.  But  if  it  finds  in 
these  limits  and  this  ascent  from  the  physical  the 
whole  truth  of  derivation,  it  must  either  reject  such 
conceptions  as  God,  duty,  immortality,  or  else  it 
must  so  explain  and  interpret  them  as  to  exclude 
their  infinite  meaning.  The  greatest  things  can  only 
be  proved  outcomes  of  the  least  by  emptying  them 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  451 

of  their  greatness.  An  effect  cannot  be  greater  than 
its  cause.  God,  defined  as  result  of  evolution  from 
things,  is  not  Infinite  Mind,  nor  can  the  substance  of 
the  cosmos  be  the  result  of  its  phenomena.  Duty 
cannot  be  a  mere  generalization  of  certain  observed 
successions  in  human  experience,  and  at  the  same 
time  mean  unconditional  allegiance  to  right.  And 
how  can  a  consciousness  of  indissoluble  relations 
with  being,  which,  as  the  real  sense  of  immortality, 
underlies  all  crude  notions  of  a  future  life,  be  justi- 
fied by  tests  which  derive  mind  wholly  from  things, 
or  allow  for  true  only  what  can  be  strictly  defined 
and  historically  explained  ?  To  deny  the  intuitive 
element  is,  in  consistency,  to  drop  all  grounds  for 
these  conceptions.  But  more :  to  carry  out  the  de- 
nial is  to  abolish  science  itself.  It  cuts  away  the 
idea  of  law,  which  is  transcendental ;  it  sweeps  off 
all  recognized  bases  of  physical  order,  —  atom,  ether, 
vibration,  undulation,  correlation  of  forces,  unities  of 
evolution,  —  which  are  all  ideal,  and,  however  rec- 
oncilable with  observation,  were  never  outwardly 
seen,  nor  heard,  nor  comprehended,  and  never  can 
be,  and  therefore,  as  assumed  explanation  of  the 
universe,  imply  powers  of  intuitive  perception,  real 
insight  of  the  imagination.  And  although  these  the- 
oretic forces  must  be  verified  by  observation,  there 
is  no  verification  needed  nor  possible  for  that  neces- 
sity in  the  human  mind  for  universal  conceptions 
and  transcendent  explanations  from  which  they  all 
proceed. 

Nor  is  this  philosophy  inconsistent  with  the  ascent 
of  evolution  from  lowest  to  highest  conditions,  since 
every  step  in  this  ascent  involves  concurrence  of  the 
whole,  and,  in  some   form  or  other,  relations  with  its 


452  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

Infinite  Substance.  To  hold  fast  this  reality  of  sub- 
stance is  indispensable  to  science.  Its  laborers  must 
not  be  so  absorbed  in  watching  processes  as  to  ignore 
that  enduring  fact  which  the  process  implies  and  in 
which  it  inheres.  Now,  whether  mind  be  regarded 
as  merely  the  last  link  in  a  chain  of  physical  trans- 
formations, or  resolved  into  a  compound  of  sensations 
alone,  in  either  case  its  substance  disappears ;  it  is 
flow  of  transmutation  and  process,  involving  nothing 
to  be  transmuted  or  to  proceed.  In  such  definitions 
as  that  of  Comte,  —  that  "  mind  is  cerebration,"  — 
'or  of  Haeckel,  —  that  it  is  "  a  function  of  brain  and 
nerve,"  —  or  of  Strauss,  —  that  "  one's  self  is  his 
body,"  —  or  of  Taine,  —  that  one  is  "  a  series  of 
sensations,"  —  mind  as  personality  disappears,  sub- 
stance becomes  unreal,  and  we  lose  all  hold  on  per- 
manent objective  truth.  It  seems  a  satire  to  call 
this  negation  of  the  ground  of  things  positive  science. 
I  anticipate  from  science  neither  suicide  nor  usurpa- 
tion ;  neither  denial  of  the  ideal  basis  on  which  it 
stands,  nor  pretense  of  verifying  conditions  involved 
in  the  constant  relations  of  the  mind  to  truth.  None 
the  less  must  special  forms  of  conceiving  these  rela- 
tions be  brought  through  its  tests  and  inquiries  to 
represent  their  real  universality  as  transcendental 
elements.  This  obviously  requires  that  God  should 
mean,  not  the  outside  monarch  of  the  universe,  but 
its  immanent  law  and  life ;  that  duty  should  be, 
not  the  imposed  sway  of  an  external  will,  but  loyalty 
to  that  moral  order  of  which  we  are  ourselves  a  part, 
so  that  our  obedience  is  our  freedom  and  our  growth  ; 
and  that  immortality  should  be,  not  a  graft  nor 
gift  from  without,  but  participation,  under  what  con- 
ditions we  know  not,  and  probably  cannot  know,  in 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  453 

the  permanence  of  the  truth  and  good  we  see. 
Science  is  freeing  these  intuitions  of  our  highest  re- 
lations from  false  assumptions  of  definite  knowledge 
and  from  superstitious  prescription,  and  thus  har- 
monizing their  form  with  the  real  order  of  the 
world. 

Mill  constantly  objects  to  Transcendentalism  that 
it  is  unscientific,  because  it  is  of  faith  rather  than 
reason,  —  an  old  distinction,  well  enough  taken  when 
faith  meant  implicit  orthodoxy,  and  had  no  recog- 
nized basis  in  the  very  nature  of  mental  action. 
The  highest  act  of  reason  and  every  breath  of  com- 
mon logic  rest  alike  on  the  vast  assumption  of  faith 
in  the  human  faculties.  Every  verification  of  special 
belief,  by  which  scientific  results  are  reached,  in- 
volves this  profounder  belief ;  even  verification  of 
these  faculties  has  no  other  organ  than  the  faculties 
themselves.  If  "  the  steps  of  faith  fall  on  the  void 
to  find  the  rock  beneath,"  not  less  do  the  steps  of 
science,  the  postulates  of  philosophy,  the  communi- 
cations of  speech.  Will  it  be  claimed  that  we  es- 
cape these  assumptions  when  we  begin  at  the  senses 
as  the  most  obvious  and  trustworthy  sources  of 
knowledge?  Is  there  any  assumption  greater  than 
trusting  eye  and  ear,  those  mysterious  organs,  those 
ether  waves  that  I  can  neither  see  nor  comprehend  ? 
What  is  all  our  knowledge  but  belief?  The  best 
physical  science  swarms  with  errors.  Helmholtz 
proves  the  eye  an  imperfect  optical  instrument. 
Proctor  takes  back  his  theory  of  planetary  popula- 
tion. Agassiz  declares  our  genera  and  species  the 
actual  thoughts  of  God,  and  then  Darwin  refutes 
them.  The  calculus  itself  is  but  an  approximation. 
The  elements  of  real  knowledge  are  here,  neverthe- 


454  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

less.  But  why  do  I  believe  this  ?  Why  believe  that 
the  world  is  a  whole ;  that  matter  and  mind,  the 
"  me  "  and  the  "  not-me,"  are  essentially  related  ? 
I  am  more  certain  of  this  than  of  any  detail  of  phys- 
ical science.  But  as  for  proof,  do  I  not,  in  all  this, 
walk  by  faith,  and  make  that  my  sight  ?  If  I  am 
surer  of  my  ground  than  an  infant  or  an  Australian 
savage,  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  the  experiences 
which  have  thus  helped  me  were  available  only 
through  the  constant  necessity  of  the  mind  to  out- 
run them  with  universalities  which,  although  thor- 
oughly scientific,  were  pure  ventures  of  faith. 

The  transcendeiitalist  emphasizes  this  basis  of 
faith  which  science  does  not  outgrow.  He  will  not 
suffer  it  to  be  slighted,  and  for  this  reason,  among 
others :  that  it  is  the  health  of  the  sentiments,  of 
love,  hope,  aspiration,  worship  ;  that  it  brings  to  our 
limitations  a  sense  of  relation  to  a  larger,  serener  life, 
and  repose  in  its  adequacy.  But  it  is  a  caricature 
of  Transcendentalism  to  make  it  the  basis  of  absolut- 
ist and  decaying  evangelical  dogmas  like  the  Atone- 
ment, where  the  ideal  is  narrowed  down  to  a  pre- 
scribed, exclusive  embodiment  in  the  name  of  faith. 
Its  intimacy  is  inward, — oneness  of  the  believer 
with  the  believed ;  so  that  the  sentiments,  set  free 
by  it,  become  nobilities  of  self-respect,  spontaneities 
that  bloom  into  the  best  sympathies  and  cultures, 
into  art,  prophecy,  heroism,  sainthood,  into  the  light 
and  sweetness  of  the  world.  The  manifest  depend- 
ence of  these  f raits  of  sentiment  on  faith  does  not 
make  them  at  variance  with  science,  —  that  grand 
corrector  of  extravagance  in  feeling  and  delusion 
in  thought.  For  all  its  special  errors,  the  transcen- 
dental impulse  has  generated  a  cure  in  the  science 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  455 

that  flows  from  its  intuition  of  law.  This  is  its 
own  balance-wheel,  its  own  saving  sense  of  limit;  so 
that,  with  its  head  in  the  heavens,  teacher  of  the 
eternal  life  of  man,  it  may  walk  securely,  and  do 
practical  work  under  true  human  conditions.  Its 
science  is  thus  at  once  the  child  of  its  faith  and  the 
leader  of  its  culture.  And  the  spirit  of  our  age, 
well  understanding  this  unity,  points  more  and  more 
plainly  to  an  ideal  standard  and  test  of  all  tenden- 
cies in  the  conception  of  the  Immanent  Spirit  as 
world-movement  of  law  and  life,  —  transforming  it- 
self, first  into  the  physical  order,  then  into  organic 
form,  then  into  the  Person  and  the  State ;  the  equal 
sexes,  the  arts,  the  humanities,  the  equities  of  capital 
and  labor,  the  harmony  of  races  in  functions,  the 
unity  of  the  world  in  liberty  and  growth.  This 
high  accord  of  intuition  and  science  is  the  divine 
espousal  of  the  ideal  and  the  real.  The  significance 
of  our  term  "  spirit  of  the  age  "  is  none  the  less  pos- 
itive because  it  is  transcendental ;  in  other  words, 
not  adequately  given  in  any  list  of  persons  or  events, 
but  in  somewhat  beyond  all  these,  to  which  they 
are  all  referred,  not  as  an  idea  only,  but  as  reality. 
And  whoso  most  truly  perceives  or  expresses  this 
spirit  is  not  only  the  true  transcendentalist,  but  the 
builder  of  the  future. 

If  such  is  the  natural  development  of  the  transcen- 
dental element  in  human  history,  it  is  not  a  set  of 
opinions,  and  no  school  can  be  the  measure  of  its 
validity  and  scope.  For  one,  I  do  not  propose  to 
speak  of  it  as  a  phase  that  has  had  its  day,  and  is 
giving  way  to  science.  It  is  an  organic  principle  of 
thought  and  progress.  Naturally  unfolding  into  the 
grand  results  we  have  sketched,  it  is  yet  more  or  less 


456  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

visible  in  a  great  variety  of  beliefs,  which  have  little 
in  common  but  the  fact  of  being  reached  by  a  more 
or  less  faithful  application  of  its  method.  Stated 
philosophically,  it  means  that  the  self-affirmation  of 
mind,  conditioning  all  experience  and  transcending 
the  senses  and  the  understanding  with  largest  and 
most  vital  truths,  is  recognized  as  the  primal  source 
and  guarantee  of  knowledge.  It  is  the  application 
of  this  principle  to  philosophy,  religion,  ethics,  life. 
It  points  directly  to  the  primacy  of  personal  intui- 
tion, conviction,  character.  Evidently  every  individ- 
ual declaration  in  the  name  of  universal  truth  in- 
volves it,  whatever  its  results,  because  it  is  a  step 
beyond  the  data  of  experience.  But,  like  all  princi- 
ples, it  has  its  ideal,  founded  on  its  conscious  culture 
and  higher  uses,  which  tests  and  judges  conduct.  He 
who  freely  uses  the  private  judgment  to  measure  all 
outward  authority  presumes  the  sufficiency  of  an  in- 
ward light.  But  he  is  true  to  the  ideal  principle  of 
Transcendentalism  only  in  so  far  as  he  really  main- 
tains the  primacy  of  personal  mind,  instead  of  so 
carrying  out  the  right  of  private  judgment  as  to  sink 
that  principle  or  pervert  its  meaning.  Many  a  loud 
protest  against  traditions  and  institutions  has  been 
passive  obedience  to  a  far  more  powerful  and  brutal 
despotism,  a  push  of  sensual  tides  submerging  the 
soul ;  not  the  sanity  of  intuition,  but  the  insanity  of 
desires.  On  the  other  hand,  a  poetic  nature  may  be 
disposed  to  uphold  the  institutions  in  which  his  feel- 
ings have  found  culture,  yet  be,  as  Wordsworth  was, 
completely  transcendental,  because  taking  these  in- 
stitutions simply  as  related  to  a  spiritual  ideal,  which 
regenerated  literature  by  its  appeal  to  the  beautiful 
and  true,  as  "  the  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's 
star." 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  457 

In  their  worship  of  external  authority  the  Protest- 
ant sects  have  almost  seemed  to  vie  in  showing  how 
little  might  be  kept  of  the  transcendental  principle, 
while  claiming  special  advocacy  of  the  right  of  pri- 
vate judgment.  And  in  the  great  family  of  appel- 
lants to  the  "  Inward  Light,"  —  mystics,  rational- 
ists, Quakers,  skeptics,  ascetics,  free  religionists,  with 
all  unclassified  persons  of  independent  and  earnest 
mind,  —  the  intellectual  diversities  are  doubtless  not 
greater  than  the  differences  of  degree  in  which  their 
claim  of  inward  light  really  represents  transcendental 
freedom  and  progress. 

Naturally  the  main  test  of  fidelity  to  this  principle 
is  one's  relation  to  the  moral  laws  and  spiritual  forces. 
Here,  again,  we  must  recognize  its  ideal.  The  law 
in  his  nature,  expressed  not  in  articles,  rituals,  or 
Bible,  not  in  multitude  nor  mediator  nor  specific 
religious  name ;  this  light  of  his  faculties,  self-shin- 
ing with  their  revelation  of  the  infinity  of  truth,  and 
the  absoluteness  of  duty,  and  their  participation  in 
that  which  they  know  to  be  eternal ;  this  transcen- 
dence to  imperfect  experience  and  understanding,  is 
the  consecration  of  his  life,  his  guarantee  of  ideal 
convictions,  of  broad  and  beautiful  beliefs.  And  life 
should  seem  inestimable,  and  in  this  sense  at  least 
immortal  and  divine,  through  what  it  is  thus  proved 
competent  to  hold,  of  enthusiasm  for  the  best  cul- 
tures, and  service  of  the  truth  and  right  that  are  yet 
to  rule. 

In  view  of  this  personal  ideal  there  is  a  dark  side 
to  our  social  experience.  Modern  civilization  be- 
comes more  and  more  exclusively  a  life  of  crowd- 
ing and  concretion.  Its  solidarity  stifles  the  human 
atoms,  who  have  been  strenuously  abolishing  space, 


458  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

till  the  world's  immeasurable  detail  presses  directly 
upon  every  brain  and  heart.  The  intense  magnet- 
ism of  social  machinery  pushes  every  demand  into 
unlimited  expectation,  and  gives  our  vices  a  force  as 
organic  as  ever  was  in  State  or  Church.  Corrup- 
tion wields  the  resources  of  recognized  method  in  its 
management  of  public  and  private  interests,  and  has 
its  representative  men  in  every  line,  who  become 
conspicuous  solely  because  masters  in  the  vulgar  arts 
acknowledged  to  hold  the  key  to  success.  An  un- 
bounded craving  for  self-gratification  is  fostered  by 
the  mechanism  of  our  culture,  ignoring  all  differ- 
ences of  material  in  its  training  of  racers  for  a  com- 
mon goal.  Competition  in  luxury  drives  us  on  in  its 
whirl  of  dishonest  debt  and  wasteful  apery,  till  you 
shall  barely  find  a  few  who  dare  live  with  honor, 
bringing  up  sons  and  daughters  in  just  loyalties  and 
simple  tastes.  Is  such  demoralization  beginning  to 
warn  us,  in  the  full  tide  of  organized  self-govern- 
ment, of  a  fatal  incapacity  of  moral  freedom  and 
practical  self-control  ? 

What  shall  stay  us  on  such  downward  tracks? 
Not,  I  think,  a  theory  of  science,  that  treats  person- 
ality as  mere  run  of  phenomena,  and  its  claim  to  be 
an  immediate  source  of  knowledge  as  a  mere  fiction 
of  the  imagination.  This  is  but  an  outgrowth  of 
these  very  degeneracies,  and  we  shall  look  in  vain  for 
healing  to  the  destroyer  of  our  health.  Successful 
trade,  gigantic  production,  school  machinery  without 
a  germ  of  individuality  or  self-reliance  in  its  pur- 
pose, are  plainly  the  forces  to  be  mastered,  not  the 
gods  to  be  invoked.  Spread  of  national  vanity,  grasp 
of  the  continent  and  the  isles,  are  but  symptoms  of 
our  disease.     We  want  the  personal  ideal,  inward 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  459 

dignities,  a  self-respect  and  self-reliance  tliat  require 
new  starting-points  in  the  philosophy  of  culture.  We 
want  training  in  principles  instead  of  dissipation  on 
details ;  conviction  that  the  world  reflects  the  mind, 
and  that  the  quality  of  our  mind  determines  the 
value  of  our  world ;  respect  for  the  perception  of 
moral  order,  for  the  sweep  of  law  that  transcends  the 
bounded  premise ;  the  insight  of  prophecy  that  out- 
runs experience ;  the  freedom  of  the  ideal  to  judge 
outward  prescriptions,  and  reshape  the  concrete 
world  to  fresh  necessities  of  growing  reason.  We 
need  to  react  from  that  excessive  reaction  against 
unscientific  idealism,  which  ignores  all  inward  condi- 
tions of  knowledge,  and  buries  itself  in  the  mere  ex- 
ternal object  or  sensation  as  source  of  all.  And  the 
drift  of  this  current  materialism  towards  resolving 
human  personality  into  a  delusion,  and  defining  man 
and  the  world  as  mere  run  of  phenomena,  to  say 
nothing  of  a  pessimistic  irony,  must  be  met  by  em- 
phasizing substance^  and  the  real  conjunction  of  the 
conscious  mind  with  what  is  permanent  and  univer- 
sal. In  our  zeal  for  teaching  everything,  we  are  for- 
getting that  the  learner  is  more  and  greater  than  all 
he  can  learn,  and  that  for  him  the  first  of  all  prac- 
tical needs  is  a  philosophy  of  culture  that  shall  deter- 
mine his  methods  and  aims.  In  fine,  to  save  us  from 
base  politics  and  selfish  relations  in  trade  and  labor, 
we  need  the  constant  inspiration  of  ideal  public 
duties,  whereof  we  have  hitherto  had  perhaps  only 
one  form;  represented  by  the  anti-slavery  movement, 
and  its  school  of  moral  culture,  friendship,  self-ac- 
countability, and  life-long  sacrifice,  —  an  education 
we  now  bitterly  miss,  and  are  destined  to  miss  till 
we  have  raised  to  like  levels  of  principle  and  convic- 


460  TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

tion  sach  transcendental  objects  as  the  rights  and 
duties  of  labor,  the  union  of  equal  opportunity  with 
difference  of  function  and  honor  to  the  best,  and  full 
liberty  in  the  conscience  to  think,  to  deny,  and  to 
believe. 


APPENDIX. 


The  following  appreciative  notice  by  Prof.  E.  J.  Eitel, 
of  Tubingen  and  Hongkong,  bearing  the  date  of  April  21, 
1882,  appeared  in  the  China  Review :  — 

In  Memoriam.  —  Whosoever  has  read  Samuel  Johnson's 
great  -work  on  China  will  no  doubt  learn  with  regret  of  the 
death  of  the  author  of  Oriental  Religions  and  their  Relation  to 
Universal  Religion.  Samuel  Johnson  died  on  19th  February 
last,  at  Xorth  Andover,  Massachusetts,  leaving  the  last  volume 
of  his  work,  that  on  Persia,  unfinished. 

Though  Samuel  Johnson's  preeminent  merits,  as  the  histo- 
rian of  Universal  Religion,  have  hitherto  met  with  but  scanty 
recognition  in  his  own  country,  I  have  no  doubt  he  will  eventu- 
ally be  estimated  at  his  true  value  as  one  of  the  ripest  of  Amer- 
ican scholars.  His  volume  on  the  Eeligions  of  India,  which 
appeared  in  1872,  has  been  highly  praised  by  Orientalists  of 
European  fame ;  and  I  make  bold  to  say  that  his  great  work  on 
China,  published  in  1877,  and  reviewed  by  myself  in  Vol.  VI. 
(pp.  425-428)  of  the  China  Review,  will  commend  itself  to  all 
Sinologists  as  a  most  exhaustive,  lucid,  and  correct  estimate  of 
Chinese  thought  and  life.  If  it  is  due  to  Edkins  to  say  that  he 
has  established  for  China  her  true  place  in  philology,  it  is  due 
to  Samuel  Johnson  to  acknowledge  that  he  has  fixed  China's 
place  in  the  history  of  Universal  Religion. 

Samuel  Johnson  approached  the  study  of  Oriental  Religions 
with  a  mind  specially  adapted  to  appreciate  their  true  value, 
because  it  was  a  mind  specially  scientific  whilst  essentially  relig- 
ious, and  at  the  same  time  elevated  far  above  the  narrow  sym- 
pathies of  sectarian  reHgion. 

Samuel  Johnson  prosecuted  his  studies  with  an  energy  and 


462  APPENDIX. 

zeal  inspired  by  an  ardent  and  fearless  love  of  truth  in  any 
form  and  by  a  sincere  worship  of  the  universal  in  religion.  In 
the  course  of  years,  spent  in  the  most  extensive  reading  and  re- 
search into  all  the  available  sources  of  information,  he  surveyed 
the  progress  of  the  religious  feeling  and  thought  of  mankind, 
in  its  evolution  from  the  rude  Shamanism  of  barbaric  ages  to 
the  refined  dogmatism  of  the  present  day.  He  saw  in  this  nat- 
ural process  of  evolution  a  progressive  education  of  humanity, 
through  man's  own  relations  with  the  Deity.  He  searched  out 
the  laws  of  this  religious  evolution  and  involution,  of  its  prog- 
ress and  reaction,  and  found  in  them  a  key  of  astonishing  ef- 
ficacy in  unlocking  the  mysteries  of  all  creeds,  and  in  finding 
for  all  the  most  important  transitions  in  the  history  of  Universal 
Religion  their  natural  explanation.  He  gathered  up  all  the 
ideal  elements  embodied  in  Oriental  Religions,  and  noted  down 
all  valid  forms  of  religious  thought  and  life  to  which  the  one 
spiritual  nature,  common  to  the  best  men  of  all  countries  and 
all  ages,  ever  gave  utterance  in  the  East.  Thus  Samuel  John- 
son demonstrated  most  forcibly  that  the  history  of  all  religions 
reveals  to  the  unprejudiced  inquirer  a  universal  identity  of  the 
religious  feeling  and  thought  of  all  ages;  a  universal  harmony 
of  religious  instincts  and  insights,  of  religious  demands  and 
supplies;  a  cosmic  harmony  based  on  a  substantial  unity  of  God 
and  Man  underlying  all  outward  alienations. 

If  I  add  that  Samuel  Johnson's  method  of  inquiry  was 
thoroughly  scientific,  that  his  sympathies  were  absolutely  cos- 
mopolitan whilst  essentially  religious,  and  that  he  laid  down  the 
results  of  his  most  painstaking  inquiries  in  a  style  which  carries 
the  reader  right  along,  fascinating  as  it  is  by  its  vivacity  and 
sparkling  lucidity,  whilst  intensely.suggestive  and  instructive,  1 
can  but  wonder  that  his  countrymen  in  the  United  States  did 
not  give  him  that  place  among  the  foremost  writers,  thinkers, 
and  scholars  of  the  present  day  which  he  so  fully  deserves. 

But  perhaps  Samuel  Johnson  was  too  fearless  a  lover  of  all 
that  is  true  and  good  in  any  form  and  in  any  nation,  too  consist- 
ent in  the  application  of  his  scientific  method  of  inquiry,  too 
outspoken  in  his  trenchant  estimate  of  the  practical  value  of 
Christian  theology,  Christian  morality,  and  Christian  civiliza- 
tion, to  have  escaped  the  unintentional  sin  of  running  counter 
to  the  principal  tenets  of  many  influential  sections  among  his 


APPENDIX.  463 

countrymen,  who  were  naturally  roused  thereby  into  well-meant 
antipathy  and  antagonism. 

In  his  comprehensive  view  of  the  progress  of  Universal  Re- 
ligion, Samuel  Johnson  gave  to  Christianity  no  exceptional 
place,  but  included  it  as  but  one  of  the  steps  in  the  universal 
progress  of  religion.  So  far  he  was  right  enough.  But  in- 
stead of  recognizing  in  the  ideal  of  the  Christian  religion  the 
final  keystone  of  the  whole  edifice  of  Universal  Religion,  he 
allowed  his  experimental  knowledge  of  practical  Christianity 
to  warp  his  judgment  of  its  ideal  value.  On  the  other  hand, 
having  not  come  into  practical  contact  with  the  living  realiza- 
tion of  Confucianism,  Buddhism,  or  Indian  religions,  his  esti- 
mate of  these  religions  became  unconsciously  higher.  Moreover, 
there  was  to  him  no  such  thing  as  revealed  religion  in  distinc- 
tion from  natural  religion.  In  comparing  the  practical  value  of 
all  religions,  he  saw,  therefore,  no  reason  to  give  to  the  Christian 
religion,  whose  morals  and  civilization  he  had  found  practically 
inferior,  the  palm  of  preference.  He  boldly  compared  Confu- 
cius, Buddha,  and  Jesus  Christ,  and  calmly  pronounced  Con- 
fucius, to  his  thinking,  the  greatest  of  the  three.  Shocking  as 
this  must  be  to  every  Christian  mind,  even  greater  danger  to 
the  interests  of  sectarian  Christianity  was  probably  seen  to 
arise  from  the  general  tendency  of  Samuel  Johnson's  researches, 
because  such  a  provokingly  independent  search  for  the  universal 
in  religion,  viewed  in  the  light  of  the  results  accumulated  in 
Samuel  Johnson's  work,  clearly  tends  to  encourage  a  general 
exodus  from  all  distinctive  religions,  and  a  migration,  through 
years  of  wandering  in  faithless  and  creedless  deserts,  to  a  prob- 
lematical Canaan  of  Universal  Religion. 

As  his  fearless  independence  of  research  and  his  trenchant 
criticism  of  modern  Christianity  must  have  brought  Samuel 
Johnson,  in  spite  of  his  intense  religionism,  into  bad  odor  with 
almost  all  religionists  in  the  United  States,  so  his  utter  want  of 
national  bias  and  his  outspoken  admiration  of  all  that  is  good 
in  the  Chinese  people  must  have  diverted  from  him  the  sympa- 
thies of  most  American  politicians.  The  value  Samuel  Johnson 
puts  on  the  peculiar  civilization  of  China;  the  excuses  he  found 
for  the  barbarism  interwoven  in  its  structure ;  the  charming  de- 
scriptions he  gives  of  the  alacrity,  of  the  social  constructive- 
ness,  the  competitive  ardor,  the  economic  methods,  and  the 


464  APPENDIX. 

assimilative  power  of  the  Chinese  people,  placed  his  researches 
out  of  tune  with  the  politics  of  the  day.  What  reception 
would  he  have  received  in  California,  or  even  in  the  United 
States  Congress,  who  dared  to  quote  the  following  sentence,  for 
instance,  from  Samuel  Johnson's  work  referring  to  the  immi- 
gration of  Chinese  into  the  States?  "  Their  immigration  is  a 
national  blessing,  not  only  as  productive  force,  but  as  stimulant 
to  the  morals  of  industry.  Their  cheap  labor  is  a  test  of  our 
theoretic  and  practical  liberty,  their  inaptness  for  Christianiza- 
tion  our  school  of  religious  universality."  Even  the  missionary 
party,  the  best  informed  defenders  of  Chinese  interests  in  the 
United  States,  would  naturally  fight  shy  of  a  man  like  Samuel 
Johnson,  who  pronounced  their  present  labors  in  China  a  failure, 
and  fearlessly  stated  his  belief  that  "  the  mission  of  Christianity 
to  the  heathen  is  not  only  for  the  overthrow  of  many  of  their 
religious  peculiarities,  but  quite  as  truly  for  the  essential  modifi- 
cation of  its  own." 

Although,  therefore,  Samuel  Johnson's  few  admirers  must, 
for  the  present,  remain  satisfied  with  but  little  sympathy  and 
scanty  justice  on  the  part  of  American  readers,  I  have  no 
doubt  that  a  time  will  come  when  Samuel  Johnson  will  be  rec- 
ognized in  his  own  country  as  one  of  their  greatest  thinkers 
and  scholars,  and  when  it  will  be  acknowledged  that,  though 
his  estimate  of  Christianity  was  erroneous,  he  put  a  conscien- 
tious and  just  value  on  all  other  religions.  What  Heine  said 
of  Herder  is  equally  true  of  Samuel  Johnson,  namely,  that, 
instead  of  inquisitorially  judging  nations  according  to  the 
degree  of  their  faith,  he  regarded  humanity  as  a  harp  in  the 
hands  of  a  great  master,  and  each  people  a  special  string,  help- 
ing to  the  harmony  of  the  whole.     Restat  in  pace. 


APPENDIX.  465 


LIST  OF  MR.    JOHNSON'S  PRINTED  WORKS. 

The  Worship  of  Jesus.  Boston,  1868.  92  pp.,  sm.  8vo, 
cloth. 

Oriental  Religions  and  their  Relation  to  Universal  Religion : 
India.     Boston,  1873.     vi,  802  pp.,  8vo,  cloth. 

Oriental  Religions  and  their  Relation  to  Universal  Rehgion: 
China.     Boston,  1877.     xxiv,  975  pp.,  8vo,  cloth. 

PAMPHLETS. 

The  Crisis  of  Freedom.  —  A  sermon  on  the  rendition  of 
Burns,  preached  Sunday,  June  11,  1854. 

A  Sermon  on  the  Assassination  of  President  Lincoln.  Sun- 
day, April  16,  1865. 

The  Religion  of  a  Free  Church.  —  A  discourse  delivered  at 
the  opening  of  the  Free  Chapel  in  Lynn,  Sunday,  June  10, 
1866. 

A  Ministry  in  Free  Religion.  —  A  discourse  delivered  on  the 
occasion  of  resigning  this  relation  to  the  Free  Church  at  Lynn, 
on  Sunday,  June  26,  1870. 

A  Memorial  of  Charles  Sumner.  —  A  discourse  delivered  to 
the  Twenty-eighth  Congregational  Society  of  Boston,  on  Sun- 
day, March  15,  1874. 

IN    "THE   RADICAL." 

Bond  or  Free.     October,  1865. 

Discourses  concerninsj  the  Foundations  of  Religious  Belief:  — 

L  Past  and  Present.     November,  1865. 
II.  Real  and  Imaginary  Authority.     December,  1865. 

III.  Fallacies  of  Supernaturalisra.     January,  1866. 

IV.  The  Adequacy  of  Natural  Religion.     March,  1866. 
V.  Spiritual  Needs  and  Certainties.    May,  1866. 

VL  Naturalism.     July,  1866. 

Letter  to  James  Freeman  Clarke  in  reply  to  Criticisms  on 
*'  Bond  or  Free."     February,  1866. 
Second  Letter.     October,  1866. 
American  Religion.     January,  1867. 
The  Spiritual  Promise  of  America.     April,  1867, 
30 


466  APPENDIX. 

George  L.  Stearns.     June,  1867. 
Natural  Democracy.     May,  1868. 
Shadow  and  Eclipse.     December,  1868. 
Foreclosure  of  Spiritual  Unity.     January,  1869. 
The  Piety  of  Pantheism  —  As  Illustrated  in  Hindu  Philosophy 
and  Faith.     June,  1869. 

Jefferson's  Rip  Van  Winkle.     August,  1869. 

Free  Religion  and  the  Free  State.     October,  1869. 

The  Search  for  God.     April,  1870. 

Historic  Birthdays.     March,  1871. 

Labor  Parties  and  Labor  Reformers.     November,  1871. 

IX   "THE   RADICAL   REVIEW." 

Transcendentalism.     November,  1877. 

BEFORE   THE    FREE    RELIGIOUS    ASSOCIATION. 

The  Natural  Sympathy  of  Religions.  —  Report  of  F.  R.  A. 
1870. 

Freedom  in  Religion.  —  Report  of  F.  R.  A.     1873. 


Mr.  Johnson  was  also  a  contributor  to  the  Anti-Slavery 
Standard,  The  Liberator,  The  Liberty  Bell,  The  Common- 
iveolth,  and  The  Index.  His  articles,  sermons,  and  letters 
in  these  give  his  attitude  toward  the  great  issues  of  his 
times. 


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